Battleground Pacific Read online

  “Who’s hit? Who got hit?” I pant and take off my helmet, as other marines fall in with us, lying on their packs and sides, gulping air in great gasps. We’re nearly vapor locked—spent cartridges, all in a row. Cigarettes are lit, and everyone’s breathing gas fumes from guzzling that water-type-shit from the jerry cans. Some marines are in a state of collapse, gazing over the airfield we just crossed, unbelieving, shielding their eyes from the rays of the sun, as other marines stumble in. Nobody knows it now, but the guys on our left, in 2/1 and 2/5, are getting flamed up by a lot hotter stuff than what we just went through. As for us, we are two killed and about four wounded during our jaunt. Even that is too many. Exasperating. Demoralizing. You always care for the marine next to you—even if you don’t like the bastard.

  Joke: Why did the marine cross the road?

  Punch line: Because the brass wouldn’t let him go around it.

  Funny.

  *

  We’re burning up where the undergrowth becomes thicker along the march east of the airfield. That’s where we’re sent. That’s where we go.

  I don’t know how I do it, yet just when I think I’m about to collapse, I somehow find the way to take one more step into the heat and the unknown. You just grit your teeth at the sensation of your blood boiling in your veins, while you hope to hell that it really isn’t.

  Squinting, vigilant, and painful, marines’ eyes look as Oriental as the occasional Jap corpse we come across amid the tricky mangrove. The dead Nips are black crusted, blimped, belching and farting noxious gasses, their swollen tongues plugging their mouths, almost taunting. Some of our guys try to pick through their bodies, scanning for loot, yet they soon give up on these Jap monsters—they are too far gone, too decomposed, even for the more brazen among us.

  Then.

  Boom boom boom boom! In an instant some heavy Jap stuff drops in and around us …

  “Christ!”

  We freeze. Drop. Then race for shelter—all of it in a single motion with no breaks between actions. “Ah, crap!” Levy, McEnery, Allmann, and I skate through a patch in the thicket and then collapse on the other side. Breathlessly we listen. No one calls for a corpsman, which means everyone’s aces.

  The Japs are using their “knee mortars” on us.

  The Nips’ rifles might be antiquated bolt actions, and their grenades are wonky, because they have to whack them on something to ignite their fuses, but their mortars are arguably better than what we have for close-quarter fighting. The Japanese mortars are more portable and lighter, and they pack nearly the same punch as one of our 60 mm jobs. Moreover, it takes only one Nip to use one, so they don’t have to line their guys up in squads to be effective.

  To add insult to injury, the story goes that when the marines on Guadalcanal confiscated the first Nip knee mortars, the marines literally tried firing them off their knees. Whether or not that’s true, or whether or not the marines broke their legs doing it, is something I can’t verify. Nonetheless, the Japs just stick them in the ground, fire off a few rounds, and then disappear, with very little effort wasted setting them up or tearing them down.

  That makes for quick work on us. The Nips have vanished before we can sight them in.

  As we regained our bearings in the small clearing, we met some boys from a JASCO unit, setting up where they could observe the Umurbrogol Mountains, about seven hundred to nine hundred yards to the north of us. The Umurbrogol Mountains were a joke as far as mountain peaks go: More like the Marine Corps making mountains out of molehills, truth be told. Those JASCO guys, however, were nothing to scoff at.

  JASCO (Joint Assault Signal Company) was a unique group of assault troops, composed of marines, army, and navy men, who were responsible for directing joint artillery from the army and navy guns in support of ground troops. That meant us. So not only did they immediately gain our respect, but they were also one hell of a nice group of guys. In this particular unit, there were an army and a navy officer coupled with some radiomen, all of them combat armed to the teeth.

  We sat and chatted with them awhile, taking any rest we could.

  “So, where are you boys from?” the army officer asked.

  Jim McEnery, acting like a big shit, let them know. “King Company, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines. We’re headin’ east of here, gonna break off the Nips across the island.”

  I rolled my eyes theatrically toward Levy and mouthed, “King Company,” doing my best McEnery impression. Sy barely stifled a laugh. What Jimmy didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  “Well…” The navy officer put down his field glasses for a moment. “You marines have some rough goin,’ then.” He motioned with his binoculars at all the mangrove. “All this crap. It only gets worse goin’ where you’re headed. I dunno about any Nips, but you’ve got jungle, swamp, you name it out there.”

  That suddenly put a damper on things. We didn’t feel like joking anymore.

  One of the JASCO boys saw that the mood had changed, and to his credit, he tried to cool it down—although to a man, we all had our buttholes in our throats.

  “Hey, marines, take a look at these.” The JASCO guy smiled, producing a fine set of glossy black-and-white photos of geisha girls, all dolled up: Dainty little darlings, fully clothed, yet enough to cause any male to salivate, even as thirsty as we were. We zealously passed the photos around, with lascivious looks and ribald remarks aplenty.

  Presently Jim broke our reverie. “What the hell is that?”

  Jim was focused on the distant mountains, where the muffled sounds of combat continually echoed down.

  “What the hell is what, Jim?”

  “That’s a fucking Nip up there!” Jim replied.

  Several of us moved up closer to Jim to see what he was pointing at. Jim then borrowed a pair of binoculars from the navy man, saw for himself, and then passed the field glasses around for us to confirm his hawkeyed vision.

  The Jap in question was indeed a Jap, but there was something odd about the way he was perched up on the ridge. Not only was the Nip about nine hundred yards away and really up there, but he was also very still, cemented to the side of the cliff and bent strangely as if he were already a dead man. To me the Jap appeared dead; I was about to say so when …

  Crack! Jim cradled a borrowed M-1 rifle in his arms, shooting a round at the faraway Nip, adjusting the elevation on the rear sight as he prepared to take another shot. Crack! He popped off another round as if he had a hope in hell of hitting that Nip at such a great distance. Target practice, I guess.

  Then more.

  Boom!

  Boom boom!

  A few Jap mortars dropped near us again, and just like before, everyone hit the deck—it’s automatic—as pretty glazed photos of Japanese womanhood wafted into the air.

  When the mortars ceased coming in, we all picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off, as though whatever jungle matter we’d collected on our dungarees was coming off anytime soon.

  Maybe the Japs have been zeroing us in, I thought—the same Nips who had thrown in the heavy stuff earlier, before we met the JASCO boys. However, before we parted company—that is to say, before the JASCO unit could catch on that maybe we brought the Nip mortars with us—we quickly let the JASCO troops know that it had been great, good luck, and see ya later.

  As we left the clearing, a few marines, including myself and Sy, were amazed that such nice geisha girl photos suddenly appeared in our dungaree pockets.

  “Yeah, a nice buncha fellas, those JASCO guys, huh?” Levy smiled. We never looked back.

  *

  Wham!

  Good evening.

  Just before night the Nips start throwing in heavy stuff on us, real big stuff—not like the knee mortars. Shrapnel and coral debris zig and zag, splitting the very elements in the air, turning them into something else entirely. Something like panic. Wham! Something like fast panic. It’s suffocating. Wham! The ground still offers the impossible, never quite devouring the shock of the Japanese sh
ell fire; instead, it kicks off fragments of harsh powder in every direction imaginable. This time there’s nowhere to run.

  Mashing myself as low to the coral as I can, I lift my head for as long as I dare and spot Van Trump and Donald Schwantz. Wham! They’ve found cover in an eight-inch depression in the coral rock, each with his arms wrapped around his helmet. A wide shallow in the earth, not deep, yet the best I’ve seen so far. Cover! Something is better than nothing as … Wham! This is worse than the airfield.

  I jump up, run, and then duck in between them, stolen bases, sliding headfirst into home plate.

  “C’mon, there’s no room for you here!” one of them shouts. I don’t know which one said it; I wouldn’t doubt it if they said it in unison.

  Goddammit! The screaming in my head is louder than the artillery. Wham! Barbed shafts of steel fly too close; they fall red and thirsty, but I move out; no questions asked.

  Dusk finds me with my back against a tangle of mangrove, curled up, my arms wrapped about my legs, knees to my chest. There’s nothing tougher than waiting for what’ll kill you. The only thing separating me and a bellyful of oblivion is several gnarled leaves and ropes of plant life that could never possibly grow anywhere civilized—so I’m uncivilized. Who gives a damn.

  This is where I’ll spend the night, come death or not. Just one more day. Wham! One more mother lovin’ day. Wham! In the morning I’ll get up and two of my buddies will tell me that a two-inch-diameter shell fragment landed in the spot Van Trump and Schwantz occupied. Evidently those guys had pushed off, too, or they would have ended up sauce.

  The ground shudders like hell. Many flickers of light.

  There’s nowhere to run.

  So this is where I spend the night. About to die.

  5

  A BLAST FURNACE IN YOUR SOUL

  September 17–25, 1944

  “CORPSMAN!”

  A sharp explosion and a quick burst of light,

  Since we’ve left the airfield, the marines’ objective on Peleliu has been to seal off the island into three separate pockets. The 1st Marines have taken the north and are getting chewed up in the mountain ranges. The 7th Marines are moving south and are mopping up any resistance down there. As for us, the 5th Marines, we’ve been in the center since landing and have been steadily pushing eastward, toward the coast, the other side of the island.

  A sharp explosion and a quick burst of light as a belch of smoke blackens the green, green foliage.

  The brass has no idea how many Japs lie ahead of us or what their disposition is. On the other hand, if the Japanese are thick in our area, they will be just as disadvantaged as we are. There’s no waging war in a jungle so dense that it’s impossible to see what you’re shooting at.

  … as a belch of smoke blackens the green foliage. “What the hell was that?”

  “Corpsman, over here!”

  The jungle is a vampire who sucks the pus from a pox-infested pit. We trudge through the bowels of a terrestrial leech, sick with blood, yet wanting more. Nothing describes this misery as thousands of branches pull at our equipment, beg for our weapons, and grope at our clothing. A straitjacket of greenery, tailor-made to trap all bugshit intruders.

  “What was that?”

  “Corpsman, over here!”

  Nothing describes this misery, for there is one variety of heat that stings and blisters, yet there is quite another that sits on your chest, a hothouse compress, turning sweat into runnels of sludge. In the jungle there’s a despair that stretches time like taffy: slow minutes, fast hours, and seconds simulating infinity. If a buddy were to tell me we had traveled twenty yards in a day, or even one hundred, I wouldn’t be able to disagree with him either way.

  Boom!

  “What the hell was that?” I shout. Marines make odd turtlehead bobs and crouch instinctively at the sound of an explosion somewhere in the green.

  “Corpsman, over here!”

  We stay squatted; our rifles scan the foliage for anything that doesn’t look right coming out of the shade. Waiting. Watching. All behind paranoid eyes. Drops of perspiration the size of marbles roll off my cheeks and fall to the jungle floor.

  Muffled pops of branches splinter among the rustling of leaves and vines. A marine would be lucky to see three or four guys around him, the jungle is so encapsulating. The canopy of overgrowth above us only allows a few thin rays of sunlight to dapple the ground below it; so in this place there’s an alien sense of both night and day, simultaneous, beneath this natural ceiling.

  We wait.

  Presently a marine comes jerkily through the growth behind me, trying to keep his balance.

  “Hey,” I call to him, “what the hell happened back there?”

  “Goddamn trip wire. Must’ve been,” he says rapidly, moving along at the same clip. “Got Levy in the chin.”

  “He alright?” I lean into my words, hoping they’ll catch up to the marine before he’s gone.

  “Think so. Probably got hisself a million-dollar wound.” Then the marine is gone. The jungle swallows him as quickly as he came.

  A trip wire. Yeah, had to be, I think. I remember back to the Hellcat pilot, all messed up in his cockpit, Jap grenades dangling off of his flight suit. I didn’t even know the pilot’s name, but I know Levy’s—and that’s when naivety becomes more of a friend to me than any marine could ever be. Out of sight, never mind.

  Back then—just three days on Peleliu—I was wise enough to know that dead meant dead (and never coming back), yet jejune enough to believe that if a marine were merely wounded, that meant that he’d be okay—on his way back to the States, drinking Coca-Cola and flirting with Red Cross girls on Banika Island.

  Like yesterday, on the airfield, we passed those heat prostration guys and kept moving, because you knew a corpsman would appear out of nowhere to fix them up. Faith is faith. Whether it’s a lie or not.

  The truth is, however, you seldom see a marine die right in front of you. They linger. They shout. They suck air through holes in their chests as their eyes grow glassy, far-seeing, staring at something that only the soon-to-be-dead can witness, until the stretcher bearers take them away. Later you would find out they had died, but by then you had grown tougher, less susceptible to the wild imaginings of drinking anything cold, anywhere, let alone with girls of any sort kissing your Purple Heart.

  It’s the reality of the grave, like it was for Larry Mahan, who I found out later could have been saved; he could have lived, if only he hadn’t gone nutty on the hospital ship and begun tearing the plasma out of his chest, trying to jump out of his hospital bed. Screaming, they said. Larry had been screaming.

  He was buried at sea, where the pressure of the ocean, versus the fragility of human skin, will implode a man, once a certain depth is reached.

  What kind of no-good burial is that?

  Death gives meaning to life once a certain depth is reached.

  When did I lose my childish way of thought?

  One thing is certain: At twenty years old and in combat I see things as they truly are and not as they are viewed when men get older and convince themselves that their stories are real—that their tales have some mystical meaning to them.

  So I have very few qualms about not seeing Levy off. Sy will be alright. This I know. The only thing to do now is to continue heading east, being more guarded against trip wires, until we reach the other side of the island, where a navy ship is waiting to take us back to Pavuvu.

  *

  There’s nobody in front of me but the enemy.

  Night has come again. If it were quiet, a marine could hear the speed-buzzing of mosquitoes circling around his ears. Or the sounds of men shifting their weight and grumbling, trying to keep their asses out of the water. We are at a place where the jungle meets up with some pisshole of a swamp.

  It’s not quiet, though. Instead the night is in overdrive, roaring fire from hundreds of 155 mm fieldpieces, whooshing overhead and kicking the hell out of the mountains beyond. />
  The ridges are far away, but we’re so close to the muzzle blasts of these 155s—no more than two hundred yards from them—that the heat burns up the night. My hands begin to shake, and it’s painful just attempting to compose a coherent thought. “Loud” means nothing when describing these powerhouses, commensurate to having a subway tunnel running between your ears.

  They’ve been going on like this since midday. A blast furnace in your soul.

  Beside me is PFC Dennis Hoffman, a good-looking, curly-haired blond kid from Buffalo, New York. Since knowing him, I’ve wondered if a pullover sweater and a job as a mail clerk back in Manhattan would suit him better than looking to get himself killed in the Marine Corps.

  He’s trying to keep up with the throb of the night—and he might have a chance at it, too, if not for this debilitating jungle rot gnawing at his feet.

  Eating his spirit away from the bottom up, the ulcers on Dennis’s feet made their intentions clear on his face, as each step he took turned his fresh schoolboy features into a rictus of agony. Step—and red bulbous cankers ground against the insoles of his boondockers. Step—and another slice of skin sloughed off his foot, America peeling slowly away, along with any hope of ever returning there.

  At the edge of the swamp, stagnant water pools as high as midway up our leggings. We squat in it. There is no way this infected water is doing Hoffman any good, with his wounds sponging up the dirt, the decay, and the jungle excrement.

  “Say, Mace?” Dennis turns to me in the gloom. His eyes clearly speak with primordial fear and shock. “Do you think we’ll be gettin’ out of here tomorrow, like they said?” He pauses. “Three days … right?”

  I look back toward the expanse of enemy ground before us. The night booms and yells murder, yet there is a soundlessness in the near pitch of darkness: An almost detailed blindness that can morph into nearly anything if the imagination is willing.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say. “Everything’s gonna be fine, Dennis.”