Authors: Homer Hickam
“I said take us in, son,” Josh growled. The young man opened his mouth to object, thought better of it, and pushed the throttle forward and cranked over the wheel.
“Marines!” Josh called down. “I need to get on that beach. So do you. It's our job, boys. So get ready.”
“Anything to get off this crate!” someone yelled, followed by cheers.
Sergeant Pinkerton, the gunny Josh had talked to aboard the troopship, yelled out, “We're with you, Captain Thurlow!”
Beside Pinkerton stood the young marine who'd drunk the foul water when Josh had suggested it. His eyes stared beneath his helmet like white marbles, and it appeared he was on the edge of puking again. Josh looked away.
Something big opened up from the atoll, and two huge splashes, like sudden boils from an underwater volcano, erupted no more than a dozen yards away from the charging Higgins boat. The coxswain started to weave the boat back and forth, but Josh stopped him. “Full throttle dead ahead, son. No time for maneuvers.”
As they neared the reef, Josh saw with a sudden shock hundreds of bodies floating in the lagoon. He also counted eight amtracs adrift; oily bubbles indicated where others had sunk. He could make out only two amtracs on the beach, and black smoke was pouring from both of them. Tatters of water and coral flew as bullets peppered their way back and forth across the reef, chewing up the Higgins boats stuck there with their ramps down. No one appeared to be alive aboard them.
“Steer for that boat there,” Josh told the boy at the wheel, pointing at a random Higgins in the long line. When the sailor hesitated, Josh reached over and jammed the throttle to its stops. “Ram it! Knock it off the reef and follow it in!”
The coxswain gasped, then slumped down, blood pouring from a wound in his neck. Josh grabbed the wheel from him and kept the Higgins on course. Then something stung his arm, and something else whizzed past his ear. The Higgins plunged on, its engine howling. “Get ready!” he yelled at the marines, who screamed their readiness back. They turned as one toward the ramp.
The Higgins plowed into the stern of one of the stuck boats, though the impact knocked it only a few yards forward. Josh backed off, then threw the throttle full ahead again, the sound of shredded steel informing him he'd thoroughly abused the transmission. Then it felt like a mule had kicked him in the ribs. He clutched his side but kept his hand on the throttle. The Higgins plowed on until it struck the stuck landing craft again. This time, the impact was enough to knock it off the coral, and it slid ahead, leaving be-hind a channel of clear blue. Holding his side and gritting his teeth against the pain, Josh drove his boat through the gap just as the transmission tore it-self to pieces and the engine seized. A pall of dense blue smoke poured from the exhaust.
“Far as I can get us, boys!” Josh yelled above the hammer of bullets splintering the Higgins's ramp. He saw a marine fall, and another was tossed back by the impact of a bullet ricocheting into his face.
“Get on the beach any way you can!” Josh yelled, then lowered the riddled ramp. He saw Sergeant Pinkerton lead the charge, only to disappear beneath the waves. Others went in behind him, most of them finding their footing, Pinkerton apparently having had the bad luck of stepping into a hole. Thrusting their rifles over their heads and wading toward the distant shore, not many of them survived more than a few seconds. The next marines across the ramp went into the water, then curved around to use the landing craft for cover. They began pushing the boat toward the beach, step by step.
Josh was aware that he was wounded, maybe mortally, but he'd have to worry about that later. He started to go down the ramp but then was startled to see several marines slogging back toward the reef. “Where are you men going?” he demanded.
“Back to the troopships, sir,” one of them called. “We lost our rifles.”
“Turn around,” Josh ordered. “Take a weapon from the dead and start fighting.”
Dutifully, they turned around, only to disappear moments later when a stitch of machine-gun fire laced through them. A flurry of bullets was tossed Josh's way, too. What sounded like a swarm of hornets buzzed past his ears, and Josh knew it was time to follow his own advice and get to the beach. He leapt off the ramp and fell, apparently into the same hole Pinkerton had found. He came up swimming, bumping into bodies every time he lifted his arms. When his feet finally found bottom, he discovered he was walking on dead marines. He couldn't take a step without stepping on one. Josh picked up a rifle in the shallows and ran to the seawall and threw him-self down. He was heartened to see a dozen or so marines were also there. One of them, sitting with his back against the wall, looked over and nonchalantly asked, “Can I have that rifle, sir? I lost mine. Do you know you've been shot in the arm? Your side's all bloody, too.”
“I'll trade you for your K-bar,” Josh said, then made the switch, buckling the sheath on his belt and drawing out the knife. “Who's in charge?”
The boy scratched up under his helmet. “Nobody, I guess. Except for you, I ain't seen no officers or gunnies on this beach yet. They gonna send some boats to take us back to the troopships?”
“Nobody's going to send any boats to take you anywhere,” Josh growled. “You're here to stay.”
“I was afraid you'd say that,” the marine answered. “I don't think them navy guns killed a one of them bastards. And didn't nobody know about that damned reef?”
A Japanese officer, screaming and waving a sword, suddenly appeared at the top of the seawall. A marine rose up and tackled him, and they both landed heavily on the sand. The marine's K-bar won the short argument that ensued. “Why'd he do that?” the marine wondered as he wiped his bloody knife on the officer's shirt. “He's got to know he's gonna get killed.”
“He knew it. They all know it, every one,” Josh explained. “That's why they're fighting so hard.”
“What should we do, sir?”
Josh gave the question some thought and decided what he needed was a working radio to report his observations. “Keep fighting,” he told the marines. “I'm going to see if I can find a radio.”
A dozen yards down the beach he instead found a lieutenant, his helmet inexplicably on backward, squatting behind the seawall in front of another knot of survivors. “All right, men,” Josh heard him say, “we're going up and over. These bastards can't stop us.”
Before Josh could say a cautionary word, the lieutenant climbed up on the seawall and looked over his shoulder at his men. “Follow me!” he yelled just as a furious swath of bullets struck him. Spurts of blood leapt out of him and he fell backward onto the beach. His men dragged his lifeless body, his face shattered, his helmet still on backward, and placed him sitting up against the seawall. His head fell forward, as if he'd decided to take a siesta.
“What outfit?” Josh asked in near despair.
“We're none of us from the same one, sir,” a corporal answered.
“Any gunnies around?”
“No, sir. Just us pissants.”
A nearby Japanese machine gun opened up, and Josh had to raise his voice to be heard. “Anybody know where I can find a radio?” When no one responded, Josh said, “All right, listen up. The Japs are right over there. What you've got to do is start using your rifles. I know it's hard to put your head above this seawall, but you either start shooting at them or you're going to be overrun.”
“Sir, we ain't never gonna take this island,” the corporal said. “Ain't they gonna come and get us?”
“You boys keep asking me that,” Josh replied. “The answer is no. You're either going to take this island or you're going to die on it. Those are your choices. Now, you boys get to shooting. Throw a few grenades. Mix it up.
That's an order. I'm going to go find a radio and see if I can't get us some help. Savvy?”
The marines savvied and turned toward the seawall. A few of them bobbed up and fired, and there were angry Japanese screams as their bullets struck home. They also began throwing grenades, and a machine gun no more than ten yards away was silenced. A young marine grinned at him. “Like that, sir?” he asked.
To Josh's surprise, it was the young marine who'd drunk the water and gotten sick on the
Clayton.
âJust like that,” Josh said, patting the boy on the back. “Keep up the good work, Randy. I know your mother would be proud of you.”
Josh headed down the beach at a low crouch, the hot sun beating on him. When he heard the crunch of boots in the sand, he thought the young marine had decided to follow him, but when he turned, he discovered it was actually a small Japanese soldier chasing after him with a long, bayonet-tipped rifle.
Josh was an expert at this kind of infighting and almost nonchalantly stepped aside, grabbed the rifle at its handgrip, pulled it forward until the young Japanese was off balance, and then buried his K-bar in the man's innards, feeling a flood of hot blood around his hand. Twisting it, he pulled out the knife and let go of the rifle. The Japanese marine gave Josh a pitiful look, then quietly fell. Josh, surprised at the regret he felt for killing the young man, considered telling him he was braveâbut then something hot hit Josh in the back of his neck. He slapped at it, thinking he'd been stung by a bee. It was, however, something hard that had lodged beneath his skin. He plucked out the thing, which proved to be a black and bloody bullet. It had struck him after being spent, possessing only enough energy to wound him. He considered for a moment putting it in his pocket as a good luck charm but decided there was nothing but bad luck to be found on this beach today. He flicked it into the sand, then went on, dodging past burning amtracs with marines hanging lifelessly from them. Everywhere in the lagoon were numerous floating men, their faces immersed in the rancid sea. Only a marine here and there had made it to the seawall, where they crouched, confused and spent, silently raising their faces in helpless supplication as Josh sprinted past.
Bosun Ready O'Neal slogged out of the water and fell onto the beach. He was a bit shaken but unscratchedâ
a bit of luck for sartain.
When Ready had discovered Captain Thurlow was no longer on the troopship, he'd figured out what his skipper had probably done. To find him, Ready had come in with a bunch of engineers who'd been sent to defuse a line of underwater mines near the reef that fronted Red Beach Two. After motoring in as close as possible, the engineers had jumped into the water. Ready followed, ducking machine-gun bullets, and swam around until the lead engineer announced that, as far as he could tell, none of the mines were armed. “Guess the Japs got in too much of a hurry,” he concluded before being struck in the head by a bullet.
The engineers swam back to their boat, pulling their dead sergeant with them. After a moment of indecision, Ready decided to strike out on his own for shore. His captain was surely there, and there he had to go. He swam steadily, an occasional bullet plinking nearby, until he arrived at a long pier jutting perpendicular from the beach. Ready had taken off his shoes before going into the water, so after crawling ashore beneath the pier, he took a dead marine's boots that looked like they would fit. Since he'd also taken off his shirt, he put on the dead man's utility shirt as well, then plopped aboard his helmet, too. Finally prepared, Ready clambered from the protection of the pier and set off down the beach, hoping to find Captain Thurlow. Before long, he came upon three live marines squatting beside a dozen dead ones. “Any of you seen a Coast Guard captain?” Ready asked politely.
The three marines stared at him. “No, sir!” one of them chirped. “Do you have orders for us, sir?”
Ready was surprised at the response. “I don't have any orders. I just want to find my captain.”
“All the officers we've seen on this beach are dead, sir,” the marine answered, “except for yourself, of course.”
That was when Ready realized he had taken the clothes off a dead marine officer. He wondered what his rank was and surreptitiously glanced at his collar. He was astonished to discover that he was a major and that, based on his reading of his name tape, his name was Deer.
“Sir, if we stay here, we'll get killed, for sartain,” one of the marines said urgently.
Ready lit up like a bonfire when he heard the marine's brogue. “Where are you from, boy, and what's your name?”
“North Carolina Outer Banks. Hatteras Island. I'm Frank Tucker.”
“I knew a Bill Tucker,” Ready said. “He came down to Killakeet to stomp clams from time to time.”
“Bill's my brother.”
Ready felt like hugging the marine. He'd found a neighbor! Then he decided it wouldn't be seemly for a major to go around hugging enlisted men, even neighborly ones. “The Tucker family were always good fishermen,” he said, with the reserve he felt appropriate to his new rank.
The marine named Tucker, even if he was from the Outer Banks, didn't seem to be in the mood for reminiscing. “Major, there don't seem to be no-body in front of us,” he advised. “I think the Japs figure they've killed everybody on this particular stretch of beach, and they have, pretty much. That's why we've been kind of sitting here, real quiet-like, hoping not to call attention to ourselves.”
Ready nodded. “That makes sense.”
One of the other marines gave Ready a semi-salute as if fearful of doing the wrong thing. “I'm Private Sampson, sir. New Jersey.”
Ready semi-saluted him back. “Well, Private Sampson, what do you think we should do?”
“I guess we ought to invade this island, sir. That's what they sent us here to do. Do you think it would be all right if we got off this beach and killed us a few Japs?”
“I guess so,” Ready answered after a short second of thought.
The marine who hadn't introduced himself picked up a rifle out of the sand and handed it to Ready “Just give us the word, sir,” he said, then added shyly, “My name's Private Garcia. I'm from McAllen, Texas. My daddy swam the Rio Grande, and look where it got me.”