Battle Cry (39 page)

It was dark before we crawled out. Two hours of it. We dug in and fell off to sleep not even bothering to stab land crabs.

L.Q. Jones crouched down in the middle of a bush and took a time check. One hour to go. His head nodded; he snapped his eyes open. Stay with it…only an hour and you can go to sleep…only an hour. Jesus, my side aches…can’t get my eyes open…don’t sleep…dammit! Snap out of it.

Wish I’d stop sweating and shaking. Must be cold from the wet. Fifty-eight minutes more. Don’t sit…stay on your knees, that’s right. You can’t sleep on your knees…if you doze, you’ll fall over and wake up. Wish my gut would stop jumping. Crapped nine times tonight. Musta got the crud.

His rifle dropped to the ground, his eyes popped open again. Can’t sleep, dammit, can’t…Japs all over…can’t let these guys get jumped…got to guard…got to guard. His breath became heavy and jerky and his eyes swollen from mosquito bites. He shook his head hard to clear it. His clothing was a mass of soggy sweat.

Dragging ammo up the hill all day…never been so tired…if it wasn’t mud wouldn’t be so bad. Slopes too slippery…how much longer…fifty-two minutes. Hope Danny’s watch is right…Oh God….

Forty minutes…soon it will be thirty and I can sleep….

Mary had a little lamb…its fleece was white as snow…no its fleece was black as mud…and Mary didn’t even know, the lamb had galloping crud. Got to remember that and tell the fellows. I got to…What was that?

“Halt,” L.Q. said. “Who goes there?”

“Marine.”

“Password?”

“Lola.”

“Who is it?”

“Forrester.”

“What you doing? I got thirty minutes more.”

“You looked kind of beat out when you fell down the hill with the ammo box today.”

“I’m O.K., come back in a half hour, Danny.”

“Go on, get some sleep. I can’t sleep anyhow.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Think I’ll check into sick bay, I got the craps bad.”

“Twenty-one times today for me,” Danny said. L.Q. somehow managed to reach the battalion aid station two miles in the rear and staggered through the tent flap. Pedro Rojas turned up the dim lantern.

“Christ, L.Q., sit down.”

“I…I…got the shits.”

“That hain’t all you got, my good friend.” He popped a thermometer into L.Q.’s mouth, mopped his forehead with a cool, biting rag of alcohol, and put a blanket over his shoulders. He read the thermometer and wrote out a tag.

“What the hell you doing, Pedro?”

“You got the bug.”

“Malaria?”

“Yes.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Hokay, I’m nuts…you’re going back to the rear echelon.”

L.Q. staggered to his feet. “You want the guys to think I’m chicken?”

“I don’t care what they think, you are one sick Marine.”

“Pedro,” L.Q. pleaded, “don’t turn me in. Give me some quinine pills, I’ll shake it off.”

“Nope.”

He grabbed the corpsman, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I can’t leave my outfit,” he cried. “You can’t send me back…I don’t care if I die but you aren’t turning me in. We’re working our asses off up there. If I go it means more load for them to carry….”

Pedro released L.Q.’s grip and walked him to a cot. “Take three of these now and three every four hours….”

“You won’t send me back, will you, Pedro?”

“Hokay, stay here tonight. You can return to the front in the morning.”

“Telephone Mac, Pedro. Tell him I’m here…and I’ll be back up tomorrow.” He downed the pills and flopped to the cot and fell into a sweaty, restless sleep.

Pedro covered him and lowered the lantern. What was the matter with these Marines, he thought. What kind of people were they? Did they not know when they were very sick? To hell with it. If he could sneak quinine pills to Huxley he could give them to L.Q. But why they all pick on poor Pedro? This was the fifth man today.

Divito, the little jeep driver, gunned his vehicle to a spot six hundred yards from the CP. Where there were no paths, he made them. We marveled at Divito and the other drivers who seemed to accomplish miracles with the little four-cylinder reconnaissance cars. It was a lucky break for us. The lines had rolled forward another thousand yards and the route to the new command post was sheer murder. The hills out in the interior were knee deep in quagmire and the brush was thick and dangerous. Our new position was closer to the coast, out of the mud and graying shroud, but in the baking sun.

The jeep sunk to its hubcaps under the gear we crammed aboard her. I called Andy and Danny, who were packing up the TBX, and went into a conference to determine where they could fit this last piece of gear. By strapping the antennae and generator across the hood, they reckoned it would give Divito room to shift gears, although most of the driving was in compound low. As they fitted the battery case in, Lieutenant Bryce approached. “What the devil are you men doing?”

“Loading the TBX, Bertram.” We called him Bertram up here and it gave us a great deal of satisfaction.

“Well, I’m very sorry, Mac, but I believe I have priority over the radio,” he said.

“You mean, Bertram, you want us to carry it while you ride?”

“As company commander it is my duty to see that all gear reaches its proper destination.”

“I know the way,” Divito spat.

“You will kindly remove the radio without further ado.”

Ziltch, the skipper’s orderly, was standing nearby taking in the beef. He paced over to Huxley and on tiptoes whispered into his ear, pointing to us. As Huxley came over, Bryce threw his pack in the jeep and tried to hurry us unloading the radio.

“Good morning, Sam. I saved a place for you,” Bryce lied.

Huxley motioned for Bryce to follow him and led him out of earshot.

“Get your goddam pack out of that jeep, Bryce.”

“But, Sam, I was only trying to save a ride for you. You know how those fellows are. Why, I’ve had a terrible time keeping the supplies coming up; the way they hide on working parties is disgraceful.”

“Get your goddam pack out of that jeep,” Huxley repeated. “When did you get the bright idea you were more important than a TBX?”

January 22, 1943

Huxley calmed the commander of E Company and lifted the field phone. “Hello, Topeka, this is Huxley. Easy Company hit a spot around K4 on the map. Japs are dug in caves. We had to bypass and surround the area…Hell no! We can’t gun them out, they’re in too deep. E Company’s burned up—two boys got killed after the Nips gave them a phony surrender and they went in to help them out of the caves….”

“Tell them that—” the E Company skipper interrupted.

“Pipe down,” Huxley said. “Yes, we need engineers with dynamite or something. We’ll have to blast. Get them up here before dark…what? Well, O.K., we’ll try anything once.”

“What did he say, Sam?”

“They’re sending flamethrowers up.”

“Flamethrowers? I didn’t know we had them.”

“First time in the war they’re using them. They’ve been waiting for a situation like this.”

Ten Easy Company riflemen approached the opening in the hill with caution. A BAR man sprayed the treetops clean of snipers. They took up positions on either side of the cave mouth.

“Come on out,” Huxley barked. There was no answer from the blackness inside. “Come on, we know you’re in there.” Silence…then a rattling.

“Hit the deck, grenade!” They flopped away fast as the missile blew.

“Lay down a covering fire,” Huxley ordered. The Marine weapons blazed into the cave. Huxley signaled the flamethrowing team to move up. The number one man crawled slowly under the heavy weight of the tank strapped on his back. He took a place between two riflemen. Huxley nodded to him to shoot at will.

The flamethrower man waved everyone back and aimed the long hose-connected nozzle. A whiff and a streak of fire shot out. It sent a hot breath past the men as it streaked into the cave.

A shriek! A Japanese soldier ran from the opening, a human torch. He made five yards, then crumpled into a smoking heap.

January 23, 1943

The position of Huxley’s battalion was now in the center of the line connecting the Army flank to the interior with the Marines along the coast. Our command post was inside a horseshoe-shaped ridge and its slopes were rocky and barren. The CP, usually in the rear, this time extended out and was actually the furthermost point towards the Kokumbona River, the next day’s objective. Our rifle companies were strung out along a slope some fifty yards behind the bulge of the CP position.

Below us there was a small stream that ran toward the sea. Across the stream was a thick woods which we presumed was infested with Japs. In the CP we had an excellent vantage point. We could look down on the enemy without being seen ourselves.

As the day drew to a close, reconnaissance planes buzzed the woods past us for photos and a destroyer dropped anchor offshore to stand by for additional gunfire support. We set up our radios and dug in on the rocky deck.

I gave my squad the glad tidings. “You guys can take off your shoes tonight.”

“Man, that sounds like money from home without writing for it.”

As boondockers came off, a terrible smell arose over the bivouac. We hadn’t seen our feet in over a week. I tugged on my socks and they disintegrated to shreds. I scraped a half inch of hard caked mud off and looked between my toes. As I had suspected from the pain, they were turning green with fungus growths.

“Don’t scrape that stuff off,” Pedro warned. “I’ll be around to put some joyjuice on them, Mac.”

At least we had the jump on the fungus which was growing in our ears, but the feet would be a long time healing. And a long time healing the crud that drained our weight and sucked every ounce of energy until often we ran on sheer will alone. And the malaria which was cropping up, and the yellow jaundice which made our atrabine tans yellower. We were grateful we couldn’t see each other’s faces under the grizzly-bear beards and layers of hardened sweat and mud.

In honor of the shoe doffing, we all took whores’ baths in half helmets of water. It was very refreshing. Burnside and me even omitted the usual growl about wasting the stuff.

“I’d sure like to brush my teeth again before I die.”

“Just think, I used to fight with my old lady about taking a bath once a week.”

We settled around our foxholes near the radio and batted the breeze.

“I hear say, cousin, that Dugout Doug done reported that all Jap resistance is over on Guadalcanal. Some rear echelon guy heard it over shortwave.”

“Mighty nice of Doug. He’ll get another medal for that.”

“Get any good souvenirs today?”

“Me and Danny went hunting last night but them riflemen don’t leave too much.”

“I hear some of the guys in Fox Company can shoot a Jap at fifty yards and have him field-stripped before he hits the deck, dead.”

“I got mine,” Spanish Joe said holding up a bottle of gold teeth.

“If you want to go around with your pliers yanking teeth out of pore old dead Japs, that’s your business. They stink too much for me.”

“Anybody here got a weed?”

“What do you think this is, a USO?”

“I got one left,” I said. “Who’s got a match?”

“Not me, gave up smoking, it’s bad for my health.”

The cigarette lit, we passed it around, each man taking a drag while the others watched cautiously. When it got back to me I had to slip a pin through the end to keep from burning my lips.

“I’d sure like to be in a nice clean bed with a broad snuggled up next to me.”

“Knock it off, sex is a reverent subject around here.”

“I ain’t had one on in a week.”

“I hear that malaria will make us sterile.”

“I’d sure like to find out.”

“You wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it.”

Andy broke out a deck of greasy tattered cards. Each one was bent or torn so that even the rankest player could read them. He dealt.

“This is the old legit, gentlemen, five card draw.”

“Hmmm,”
L.Q. said, “I’ll open.”

“Easy, L.Q.,” Forrester said. “You already owe me six million, three hundred thousand, four hundred and six dollars and eight cents.”

“I guess,” L.Q. said, “I’ll have to dig into my assets. I’ll open for the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“The Golden Gate in forty-eight, the bread line in forty-nine.”

“I’ll call that with the U.S.S.
South Dakota.
”

“I call with my cundrum factory and raise you all my whorehouses in South Carolina.”

“I think he’s bluffing. What you got, L.Q.?”

“A pair of deuces.”

“I guess you weren’t bluffing, you win.”

Lighttower came running up to us excitedly. “Chow! Hot chow!”

“Hot chow?”

“Mama mia.”

“Craphouse mouse, hot chow!”

A mad scramble to the foxholes for mess kits and we soon settled back to our first meal in nine days. Spam, dehydrated potatoes, peaches and hot coffee—real hot coffee already mixed with sidearms. We were overjoyed.

“Peaches—how the hell did they get peaches?”

“I hear that the cook borrowed them from the Army.”

“Good old Army.”

“Good old cook.”

“
Hmmmm,
this steak needs a little tobasco sauce, if you please, Mac.”

“Side order of caviar, old bean, and pass the martinis.”

“Ya don’t drink martinis with steak, ya ignorant crumb.”

“Now watch my technique,” L.Q. said, holding a forkful of spam. He quickly brushed the swarm of flies off and shoved the mouthful in, then spat out a stray fly.

“Now there’s a man with right fuzzy balls, got it down to a science.”

“On a good run,” L.Q. bragged, “I can get it in without a single fly.”

“That will be the bloody day.”

“Truth, truth.”

Andy slapped a mosquito. “I don’t mind sharing chow with flies, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let these big bastard mosquitoes have any.”

“I hear say, cousin, a mosquito landed on Henderson Field and they filled it with a hundred gallons of gas before they found out it wasn’t a Flying Fortress.”

“That ain’t nothing,” Seabags said. “Two of them landed on me last night. One of them turned over my dogtags and said to the other, ‘Another damned type O. Let’s find an A.’”