The Final Storm (39 page)

S
UGAR
L
OAF
H
ILL
, O
KINAWA
M
AY
14, 1945

T
he Japanese grenades rolled past him, most of them tossed from high above, beyond the crest of the hill. His own perch was a dangerous basket for any kind of projectile, a muddy bowl set back close to the rocks, hemmed in by burnt brush. He gasped for air, had reached the spot pursued by the cracking fire of a Nambu gun, somehow found the energy to climb what seemed to be a sheer cliff. His legs ached, a rip in one side of his boots, but there were no wounds, nothing to stop him from continuing the climb. But that thought had been erased quickly, the ground out to both sides wide open, flat rock, and just above him the Japanese seemed to target every open space with perfect precision. You’re not fighting a one-man war, he thought. You’ve got to get the rest of those boys up here, find a way to move higher still, silence as many of the enemy up there as we can. His breath was calming, and he glanced out, saw just below him, to one side, a crew working a thirty-caliber machine gun, firing almost straight up, the men straining to hold the gun in an awkward position so the gunner could draw some kind of bead on the enemy caves, which dotted the hillside close above. He watched them with pure admiration, knew that no one had been trained to fire a tripod-mounted piece anywhere but forward,
but his admiration had been tempered by fear, the men and the precious gun constantly targeted by Japanese mortars. The blasts shook the rocks around him, the machine gunners still trying to make their weapon work, the same kind of desperation he could see from the others, some of the men in his own command, scampering from shallow cover across exposed rock where there was no cover at all. The Japanese grenades had come from no more than a few feet above him, men who probably had no idea exactly where he was. For now he had kept silent, no orders called out, no voice of authority, knew that if any Japanese soldier suspected he was an officer, someone would find a way to drop one right in his lap. He had used the carbine instead, the shots blending easily with the torrents of fire rolling up across the hill. An entire magazine had been emptied at the opening of the cave, far more from his own frustration than marksmanship. There had been hints of movement there, a brief glimpse of the barrel of the Nambu gun, but the angle was too severe, the cave facing out away from him. Even if his fire struck the rocks around the mouth of the cave, it did little to keep the Japanese from doing their job, taking aim at the men,
his men
, as they tried desperately to push up the hill. Not even the thirty caliber was effective from their position farther down, no one able to shove the Japanese back into their holes for more than seconds at a time. All along the hillside Japanese troops fired from what seemed to be every angle, heads popping up from narrow holes, rifle barrels appearing in shrubs. He had watched for that, frustrated and furious, as though playing a deadly carnival game, trying to aim his carbine with a quick jerk, seeking a single shot at a head, an arm, motion in the brush where the Nambu guns fired. But the longer he remained in his hiding place, the less fire he could offer. The belt around his chest held only three magazines, and he knew that with at least two more hours of daylight, there could be no more ammo, no supplies at all sent anywhere close to where he huddled with his men. He had a clear view of the beleaguered tanks out in the flat plain, watched as they withdrew, no choice but to abandon the Marines they had tried to support. Streaks of fire had poured out of the hill from a dozen Nambu guns, some of that coming out of rock faces and brush piles a few yards above him. He knew that there were others like him, higher up, scattered among the Japanese, had picked up the telltale pop of their M-1s or the distinct fire of a Thompson. There was another thirty caliber off to the left, and like him the Marines who had reached more than halfway up the hill were spread out in shallow cover, pressed into small gorges, all along
the face of the hill. But there was one great difference between most of those men and him. The men closest below him were
his
to command, to gather and organize and complete the mission. He was supposed to
lead
. There were other officers across the hill, of course, most of them frontline lieutenants. But he knew that some of those men had gone down, had seen one in particular, Dawes, ripped apart by heavy fire from a machine gun as he led his platoon into a thicket just above the base of the hill. Porter had been stunned by the sight of that, had known Dawes since officer training, but there could be no stopping, no help, Dawes’s own men continuing to scramble up, braving the Japanese guns to retrieve their commander. As Porter reached higher ground, he had been amazed that runners had found him, desperately scared men who had been sent from below, whose single mission was to find any officer. They brought urgent word that command was desperately needed in other places, to expand their commands to include men who had become leaderless. Word came that at least two captains were dead, and Porter thought of Bennett, had last seen him down close to the base of the hill, directing fire with a radio, calling back to gunners and observers for the larger guns that were supposed to be helping them out. So far those guns had been no help at all, no artillery officer wanting to risk killing Marines who struggled too close to the Japanese targets.

The Nambu guns closest to him were aimed in a downward slant, ripping through the pockets of brush that still remained on the hill, or chipping away at the rocky crags that hid the Marines still trying to find their way to the top. He had tried to move out next to one of the hidden craggy spaces, the mouth of what seemed to be a cave, had seen too much firing there for a single gun crew. The men close below him had taken a full hour of fire from that one opening in the rocks, and he knew what that meant, that the cave had to be part of a larger network, where carriers could move unimpeded, Japanese troops back in the hill supplying all the guns with ammo and replacement barrels, or maybe switching out the guns with fresh ones. Down below, some of his men had fired back, but those men who dared to reveal their position, to fire even a single round had been struck down in a shower of lead. He had watched with sickening helplessness as the wounded Marines were retrieved by men who seemed to ignore the danger. He knew that some of those were corpsmen, but others were simply doing the job, obeying their own conscience. But those men were not always lucky, and they had gone down as well. Some of the dead had
been pulled back into cover, others still laid out on open rock, bloody wounds from mortar shells and the Nambu guns that ripped open bodies, took away limbs. After dark, he thought. We’ll get those men back down when it’s safe. Somebody will. Somebody has to.

The training had been driven hard into all of them, no man left behind,
no man
, and he had seen the extraordinary effort even his own men had made to pull the casualties back down the hill. To the officers, the emotional lesson had come from a textbook, that the officers would inspire their men on their own if necessary, retrieving any man who went down. But there was nothing inspirational in watching his own men get shot to pieces. He had felt useless, angry, building a hate for the Japanese and for himself, the lieutenant who was supposed to take care of his boys. From his perch, he could
monitor their progress
, one of those duties spelled out in another textbook, but the Nambu gun in the cave was too close to him, too utterly infuriating, too dangerous and deadly, and was killing his men with casual ease.

The perch also gave him a perfect view of the fighting out to the side, someone else’s men, more of the bare rocky places peppered with the bodies of Marines, mixed alongside dead Japanese, black bloated corpses that might have been there for days. The Marines would certainly retrieve their own, but he could see clearly now that the Japanese had no such priority. All up through the ragged hillside, bodies were laid out in grotesque shapes, some disguised by the mud so that a man wouldn’t know what was there until he crawled across it. The rain had washed some of that away, but not in the low pits, the shell holes and flat places like the one that held him now. Beneath him the mud seemed to be more like stinking black oil, what was left of three Japanese machine gunners, the rags of their uniforms holding shattered bones close by in a cluster of burnt brushy stubble. He had tried to ignore them, knew that whatever artillery shell made the hole that gave him protection had probably been the same shell that killed the three men, and so they might have been there for a week or more. He pulled himself to the farthest corner of the muddy pool, but beyond was flat open rock. He had tried moving that way already, to escape the small piece of hell, only to draw fire from another Nambu gun that seemed suspended in the rocks no more than twenty feet above him. From the mud hole he was just back at an angle the gun couldn’t reach, and the enemy seemed to know that, and so, for now anyway, ignored him.

The Nambu in the cave sprayed out fire again, and he thought of the
nickname someone had come up with to describe the sound, the chatter of a woodpecker. Doesn’t sound anything like that from here, he thought. Sounds like something I need to blow to hell. He had kept his attention mostly on that one place, expected that the Japanese who occupied the cave might still try to erase him with a grenade. Until more of his men could make their way closer, there was nothing else he could do but wait, and so, with his ammo running low, he had made that one Nambu his single purpose. The carbine rested on one knee, its muzzle barely above the stubble, waiting for anyone at the cave mouth to show himself. Instead they kept their fire on the men down the hill, who still struggled to push upward inches at a time.

He rose up slightly, looked below, Marines in every corner of every gap, some firing upward, some just hunkered down. Dammit, he thought, sure as hell some of ’em are waiting for
me
. They need something, someone to get them moving. The longer they sit, the worse it’s going to get. The mortars will find them, even after dark. He raised his head a few inches higher, saw farther below, more men along the base of the hill. They were just reaching the incline, the Japanese greeting them with waves of fire, the first scattering of rocks seeming to burst into pieces around them, mortar blasts dropping down in random patterns, men going down, some just … gone, obliterated by Japanese artillery fire that rolled across from distant positions. Farther out, on the wide-open ground, more men were moving up toward the hill, the scampering march into what had become, pure and simple, a meat grinder. He clenched his jaw, watched them falling, no cover at all. More dead lieutenants, he thought. The Japs know that, and those poor bastards are the first target. He had seen too much of that in every fight. So often, in the wide-open spaces, the Japanese had an uncanny knack for dropping the officers first.

For a long minute he kept his stare out to the open ground, watched those men slogging forward, pushing past plumes of mud and fire, the impact of mortar and artillery fire. He had no idea who they were, who their officers might be, Bennett not telling him any more than he needed to know. They continued to come, emerging out of each blast of smoke, but some were chopped down in the mud, the wounded still moving, some crawling, the sound of their agony erased by the steady roar of the shelling. He couldn’t look away, the surge of men pushing to the edge of the hill, another part of the battalion moving up into the ragged crags. As they climbed, many were hidden by the same gaps and slices in the coral that
had protected him, and he knew they were filling every space, slipping into holes and muddy hollows, sliding in behind rocks. Some men were better at hiding than others, and he was helpless to change that, saw boots dangling out from rocky perches, drawing the fire of the sharpshooters and Nambu guns. A mortar shell came down close now, just below him, jarring impact into a thick brushy hole. He was knocked back, hit the rock behind him hard, knocking his breath away, gasped for air, curled up tightly, angry at himself. No time for sightseeing. From the brush below there were screams, then another blast, straight into the same hole, the screams gone. His breath came back, and he struggled to lean forward, nothing to see, the hole just a rolling cloud of dust and smoke. Too many of his men had already tumbled off the hill, victims of the grenades, the mortar fire, some picked off by Japanese sharpshooters, a weapon that seemed to him more dangerous than any other. The single crack and ping had come past him several times, aimed somewhere below, and once he had reached the muddy bowl, so close to the tall rocks, he felt safe from that. But the men hidden down below were completely vulnerable, and the careless man who peered up would probably never hear the well-aimed round that struck the helmet, the helmet that was supposed to protect them. The snipers scared him more than the mortar rounds, something he had learned from the fights he had gone through before. The training had drilled that into him, of course, that any officer who revealed his identity by the careless slip of a show of authority could be the first man to die. They died on Guam, he thought. They’re dying here. The stupid go first. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.

He sat back against the rock, no way to keep his legs out of the stinking black mire, pulled the carbine to his chest, thoughts racing through his brain, what he should do, what orders to give. He had felt this kind of fear before, knew it was never acceptable, that he had to find the iron inside of him, make the move, put himself out
there
, do whatever it took to draw the rest of the men farther up the hill. Dammit, it’s time to be … what? In charge? Those boys are waiting for me, and no matter how many of them are left, they can’t do this on their own. Some will try, some have already tried, the brave and the stupid, no idea how deadly the Jap fire can be. Some of those are the replacements, believing the ridiculous propaganda that the Japs are half blind and subhuman, that all we have to do is shoot at them and the battle is won. No, they need someone to show them just what the hell we’re doing up here. And that’s
you
. He still held the carbine
tight against him, stared again at the opening of the cave a few yards away, his useless vigil. Figure this out, Lieutenant. Figure it out right now.