by Anton Myrer
Immediate clash of personalities today between him and Dick—could see it building. Tart sober Yankee, flashy impulsive Virginian. “Any man that needs more than three minutes to make up his mind about anything hasn’t got any God damn business leading men.” Wants to hold a review, says he wants Div to get to know him. Not much doubt that they’re going to do that. Maybe it’s a good idea: I doubt it. There isn’t all the time in the world.
Div coming back, slowly. Nothing succeeds like success. To coin a phrase. Now the supplies roll in, T/O&E swelling. Nobody would have been caught dead with us three months ago.
Donny arrived in UK last week. Short ltr, full of forced casualness, new worlds, etc. Suddenly felt afraid, reading it. Hope to God they give them plenty of time to shake down. Wished we’d been closer than we were. A soldier never gets to know his kids well enough: you should be able to but you don’t—military life is too unsettled, confused, full of external artificialities to permit it. No word from Tommy now for five weeks. She will always cling to the idea I influenced him—she’ll never believe I tried to dissuade him in all those ltrs last fall, once right in middle of Moapora mess. Begged him at least to stay on until graduation. Wish I’d met the girl—she seems like a good sort. He’s got his mother’s flair for violent extremes, impulsive action. What changes this past year has made! All the agony, and ambition, and uprooting—and we’ve only just got started …
6 Feb 43. Got word Tuesday from SWPC HQ: Wokai peninsula. Big surprise all around. Bypassing Madang, Aitape. Long pow-wow most of yesterday. High cliffs running along peninsula. We’ve drawn Red Beach, are to drive inland and take airfield; Swannie’s Div to land on Green west of peninsula, and pinch it off, take it from land side. Lot of complicated verbiage which, boiled down, means: we will be under intense artillery fire all the way to the strip, until peninsula is reduced. Much walla-walla over whether there were or were not 2 trails from cove to airfield: not even God seems to know. Maps are fantastic—they seem to be based on some myopic missionary’s abstract of a drunk’s interpretation of a New Guinea headhunter’s fancies. Aerial reconnaissance is even worse. Ben is right, the only sane place to fight is in that clean, well-charted rectangle Namur-Saarbrücken-Nancy-St. Quentin, where they’ve been slaughtering each other since Romans and Charlemagne, and every bloody hill and patch of woods has had a monograph written about it.
Pulleyne in a wrangle with Hodl. “450 tons—you people get too worked up about supply levels. The thing to do is get in there fast and nail down that airstrip.” Glaring at us, wagging his handsome silver head. “I want to tell you, there’s too much worrying going on in this lash-up. Worrying about supply and flanks and everything else.” Ben and Frenchy exchanging disgusted glances. Well: Duke’s good in some ways—he’s shaking the outfit up. If only he didn’t keep going off at half-cock. Read off a lieutenant yesterday for negligence—and then it turned out man wasn’t even involved in the exercise. Wanted to put Div in field scarves “to sharpen their esprit.” I told him he was OUT OF HIS MIND, they would mutiny and massacre us all, commandeer a boat and start for home. He muttered and rumbled and chewed on his cigar.
It finally came out this evening after chow. “Sam, whose Division is this, do you know?” Didn’t know what he was driving at, and said so. “All I hear is Damon this and Damon that, and how-Sam-did-it.” Looking at me like a fierce old turkey cock. “That’s what I want to know: are you going to be running this lash-up or am I?” I said: “General, I intend to carry out your orders to the best of my ability. If I overstep my authority and try to run the Division, I hope you’ll relieve me at once. On my part, if I feel you are in error about some matter, I will bring it to your attention directly and promptly, and to no one else.” “Fair enough,” he said, and muttered: “There’s one hell of a lot of old-home-week and down-memory-lane in this command …” Well, there is: but what does he expect? And it’s his problem, not mine. Been having my own battles to fight.
Did get one thing hammered through: two canteens for every GI. Hodl hit the roof. “I haven’t that many in stock.” “Requisition them, then.” “Sam, they’ll never carry that extra weight.” “Wouldn’t you?” He looked at me nervously. “I don’t know.” “Well, I do,” I told him. “I’ve taken a little poll with most of the Double-7 and the project is running about 40 to 1 in favor. Let’s do it.” Still thinks it’s unnecessary, a whim. Why are G-4s always so UNIMAGINATIVE???
Had a dream about Joyce last night toward morning. A beach like Monterey with heavy, slow surf and boats capsizing everywhere, terrible mortar fire. Got caught on wire, couldn’t get free, filled with panic, sinking in ooze. Joyce gliding by in lovely outrigger with candy-striped sails, two men (couldn’t recognize) hugging her, she laughing and having a great time. I cried out, they noticed me, one of the men queried her. She replied: “Well, I can’t save him. He’s stopping. It’s too bad, but that’s how it is.” Woke up shaking. So much for dream life.
Fine letter from Dad: may be given combat command in Africa, where things are not going too well. To put it mildly. Old Man really elated, almost giddy. “For God’s sake DON’T tell Tommy or she’ll have forty fits. Brent said: ‘Of course it’ll mean a bust.’ ‘Suits me fine,’ I told him, ‘whenever you say.’ But I don’t think they’ll want an old bat like me.” By God, I wish he was out here running the Salamander. I’d feel a lot better about things.
16 Mar 43. Ready as we’ll ever be. I guess. Not enough TIME. Not nearly enough, especially for landings. Rehearsal off Castlereigh an unholy fiasco. Hoyt’s people landed ½ mile down the coast, message centers hours behind, everyone yowling and howling and generally carrying on. Maybe a bad practice means a good game.
Ben wonderful with Rgt. Standing on jeep hood wearing that wrinkled patrol cap with the bill turned up like Donald Duck. “Now in case anybody’s in any doubt about it, this is the outfit that took the first real estate from the Jap Empire that was ever taken by anybody! We took the first one, and we’re going to take the last one.” A murmur, tentative: not knowing quite how to take this. Ben watching them, hands on his hips. “All right, now let’s hear it: who’s going to win this war?” “We are … ” “Wrong!” Glowering at them. “The buck-ass sad-sack privates are going to win it!” A roar. “With a little help from the NCOs …” Another roar, louder. Had them with him now. Waving my old ’03 I gave him when he took over. “Now I’m going to be on that beach right along with you, and I’m going to be carrying this oh-three. I stole it from General Damon after they slapped so much rank on him he couldn’t be seen around with it any longer. It’s going to be noisy as all hell on that beach, and you know and I know those Nips are going to be trying for officers—and I want to look just like the rest of you …” A terrific roar now: would never know the battered old Double-Seven. Pounding each other on the back and throwing their helmets in the air.
Perfect speech: kind I could never make. Cornball and tough and raggedy-ass. Pulling the replacements and the veterans all together—or rather, formalizing it, they’ve been pulled together by the hikes and battle courses.
Ben lives direct: chow, drink, fistfight, girl. No shrinking, no doubts. The way I ought to be. I can’t, ever. Those faces—so young, so eager and so trusting—if I got up there to joke with them like that I’d more than likely break down. I let things go too deep. I tell MacArthur I’d have stayed with my people on Bataan, and then I kiss Joyce T., and then I raise hell with Haley because of his lousy lack of participation in the assault plan—and then I worry about all three. Should not be like this. A good commander is like a man in a barroom brawl: belting one joker in the chin, picking up a chair in time to drop some hoodlum with a knife, throwing another one into the mirror behind the bar—and all the while maintaining a nice surface numbness, with one eye cocked on his two sidekicks, and the other open for every possible contingency. Ben is better with troops than I am.
Coming up to me later, full of eagerness under the trees. “How do you like ’em,
Sam? Think they’re ready to go?” Big square ITC stenciled on his helmet, all over the jeeps and trucks. I said: “ITC—what the hell’s that?” “In The Clutch, Sam. What they needed was a visual motto. Gap between the newcomers and the old crowd was too great.” “It also stands for Idiot Trucking Company,” I retorted. Grinning at me. “Sam, they can say it stands for I Take Cucumbers if they want to—it’s what they need.” Pulleyne hit the ridgepole when he spotted this happy colophon. “Doesn’t he know Hildebrandt’s got a Corps order out about special markings? What the hell’s he think he is, anyway—a privileged character? some kind of colorful five-alarm hot-shot?” “That’s right, Duke,” I said, “—just like you.” He glared at me. “Jesus, you’re salty.” “General, he’s done wonders with this regiment, you’ll admit that.” “But the Japs’ll know just what outfit’s facing them.” “Duke, the Japs know when you took your atabrine last night.” Finally talked him into letting it ride.
Worried about Tommy. Can’t seem to reach her anymore. Her letter strange and disturbing—veering from drab, factual observations to wild emotional outbursts; as though her mind has been maimed. All her old hatred of service boiling out now, because of Donny. She needs a villain so badly—and here I am. Is that fair? Probably not.
23 Mar 43. On the water. Plan is to loop north as if we’re intending to hit New Hanover—then break off west for the Guinea coast again. Damn ruseful. Japs probably taken in about as badly as a Reno pit man. Something final about being at sea, moving through the dark, throbbing. Standing at the rail with Ben, watching the wake churning astern in slow, molten chains. Three nights to battle. Worry. The certainty—the cold, oppressive certainty that so many of those kids below us, all around us, will be dead. The dirty, diseased hand of waste. Waste of time and lives and hope and innocence.
“Sam.” “Yes?” “Sam … I got the Joe Blakes.” “I won’t tell on you.” Silence. “Sam—I’ve got a bad feeling about this beachhead. I don’t know … the kids are all right. I mean, most of them took after me, they’ll land on their feet. But Marge—she’s sort of … well, you know. She can’t take care of herself …” Silence. The thump and seethe of water against the cool iron. “If anything goes wrong, would you keep an eye on her? look out for her?” “Sure I will. That’s a promise.” “I know I haven’t got any right to ask it.” “If you haven’t I don’t know who has.” “Yeah. Well. Thanks, Sam.”
He’s gone. The nights are so long at sea. The stars come and go behind invisible black snatches of cloud. So long and lonely. Waste again, waste and remorse now, flooding blackly. Why did I go to China? Did I need to quarrel with Tommy that time after the dance at Beyliss? Should I have refused to give the boy permission to enlist? I’ve been headstrong when I could have been wise, craven when I should have been bold. I haven’t understood very much. Why did I go and get Dev and drag him back? Who in God’s sweet name am I to judge anybody on this earth? Here we are in our thousands, rushing in gray shells toward the unknown. What is the end of all our fear and sacrifice?
Ah God. God, help me. Help me to be wise and full of courage and sound judgment. Harden my heart to the sights that I must see so soon again, grant me only the power to think clearly, boldly, resolutely, no matter how unnerving the peril.
Let me not fail them.
5
There was a draw, where a trail wandered beneath the palms, and beyond that a low hillock laced with branches and smashed fronds and bits of débris, the sunlight falling trickily across its face. And somewhere out beyond that was the airstrip. But where? Two figures, looking ridiculously clumsy and bedraggled, scuttled to the right of the hillock in a shambling run, dropped out of sight. A tiny yellow star deep in the crushed mat of vegetation winked merrily, and splinters and chips spurted from the loose earth above the pit. Cringing against the dry, dusty cascao, Joe Brand thought, I’m glad I’m not up there having to do that right now.
At the far edge of the pit Colonel Krisler was sawing one arm back and forth and shouting, “Keep it up, now! Give it to the sons of bitches—!” His face blackened with sweat and grease, he looked like a gnome from some bewitched mine. The bright yellow scarf he always wore around his neck in combat was wringing wet. A figure loomed up at the edge of the pit, tripped and tumbled into the hole, spraying coral dust over them all.
“Colonel,” he panted, “—we can’t—hang on … we got to have help over there—”
“Who’s we?”
“Charley—Captain March …”
“—Look out!—”
There came that soft, sighing shriek, thin as parting silk, and the whole world flung up like surf; black smoke billowed down around them, and shell fragments whined and hummed. A pillar of flame rose up to the right, again. The earth tilted like a rough sandy table tipped by giants. Brand found he had clamped both hands to the back of his neck. The dead Japanese soldier who had been lying just beyond his leg was gone, buried all but for one arm. The runner was lying on his face in the bottom of the pit, his fatigue blouse blown off and blood running in fine streaks from a long gouged curve in his back; his arms kept moving as though he were trying to swim, little looping motions. At the back of the smashed-in bunker Damon was huddled up in a tight crouch with his head pressed to the radio, and Brand could see his lips moving. Above the General, far above and beyond his helmeted head, was the cliff face, a shadowed gray wall from which quicksilver flashes came and went, and the puffs of exploding shells. Sitting ducks, Brand thought savagely. Dirty yellow bastards will kill us all yet. His hands, when he brought them away from his neck, were shaking slightly, and his head ached from the pressure waves.
Lieutenant Chase, Damon’s aide, was grinning at him and he winked back without changing expression. Inscrutable redskin on the warpath. Yeah, sure. Where did they all get the idea that the Indian was such a fire-eating warrior?
A medic was in the bottom of the pit now, working on the runner. Two more shells swooped down and crashed to the left, and the ground under his belly shook in protest. A machine-gun team went by in a heavy, labored run: Rodriguez, one hand wrapped in a bloody rag, carrying the tripod. Damon had handed the headset back to De Luca, the radioman, and he and Krisler were bent over a map and talking intently.
“Well, where is he now?” he heard the General say. “Is he—” The awful sighing came again, like the flutter of threatful wings. The blast tore the very sky apart, turned it black and savage, a wall of fiery water crashing over him, beating against his flesh. He found he was groaning, gasping for air; he felt old, and feeble, and filled with tearful rage. Nobody can live through this, nobody anywhere—oh-you-stupid Navy hit that cliff—! Something slammed into his helmet and drove his face against the bolt of his carbine. With great care he reached up and felt the metal: a shallow groove, that was all. Damon was still talking to Krisler, who was nodding in agreement. Jesus, how could they sit there like that, calmly talking? … It was easier in the line. You had things you had to do, the whole bunch of you were involved in the deal—you didn’t have to sit on your ass like this, waiting for the Old Man to call to you and take off for some place else. They can call it a cushy job if they want, he thought crossly, Higgins and Goethals and the rest of them: it isn’t so God damn cushy right about now …
Back in the operations room on board the Sirius, that morning, it had been cool under the moan of the blowers. Maps and charts lined the walls, sailors came and went with chits of paper, the radios crackled and hummed. Admiral Endicott, looking like a bony, irritated schoolteacher, kept picking up his white coffee mug and sipping at it and setting it down again. General Pulleyne kept passing his hand through his smooth, silvery hair and glaring at the situation map as though he could change the shape of the bay, the contours of the ridge. Damon was sitting very quietly, bent forward, his hands hanging limply between his knees.
A swabby passed a slip to Pulleyne, who glanced at it and handed it to Damon. Brand could read it from where he was standing, inside and to the right of the
weather door. CROSSBOW TO CUTLASS X REQUEST ALL OUT NAVY 753513 X ALSO AIR MISSION URGENT
“What have they got—the whole God damned cliff fortified?” Pulleyne demanded.
“Must be pretty rough,” Damon answered, “for Ben to send something like that.”
Brand stood easy, listening to the short, terse arguments, the orders. It wasn’t very reassuring. In the line, in combat, struggling to maintain contact with a dozen, two dozen men, sunk deep in the rank jungle gloom, you could comfort yourself sourly with the thought that back at Battalion, back at Regiment and Division, they could see what was going on—where everyone was, the threats and enemy dispositions, and take countermeasures. Now he could see that they didn’t know much more than the squad leader—that in some ways it was worse, because there wasn’t even the hot, raging satisfaction of trying to kill, of going forward, or the healing presence of one’s friends: here in this cool, dry, magnificently equipped room they didn’t know either—and they had to sit here and wonder, and worry, and pray they wouldn’t guess wrong. CROSSBOW—Krisler’s regiment—was clearly in trouble, and CLAYMORE hadn’t come up with a report in half an hour or more. There on the wall was the map, with the beach designations and phase lines neatly stroked on the overlay in grease crayon, the probable enemy concentrations and the airstrip and the slender threads of trails—and it didn’t mean anything: there was no correlation between this room and the beach a thousand yards away.