The Brass Chills

by Hugh Pentecost

  “There’s just one good thing about this,” Bill whispered. “Our friend couldn’t have had the chance to notify his pals that the radio was discovered. Otherwise they wouldn’t bother with a surprise attack. They’d just open up with their big guns and let us have it.”

  “If that makes you feel good, I’m glad,” I said.

  Bill reached out and closed his fingers over my arm. “I like a guy who admits he’s scared,” he said.

  “That noise you’ve been mistaking for the throb of the destroyer’s engines is my heart,” I said.

  “Good song title,” Bill said.

  I laughed … and I felt better.

  Waves washed up along the beach, and each time I thought it was the sound of a landing barge grating on the bottom. The illuminated dial on my wrist watch told me that in about three-quarters of an hour we’d begin to have light, of sorts. It would be just a little bit more fun to see who we were shooting at.

  On the Island itself there wasn’t a sound; not the blink of a torch or match.

  Then it happened, and I nearly jumped out of my skin in spite of being ready for it. A couple of hundred yards down the line a machine gun began to chatter. We could see the bursts of flame and then some kind of a flare exploded on the beach. From its light I saw the barge, the front end of it lowered. Japanese, maybe fifty or seventy-five of them, were pouring out onto the beach. Some of them ran forward for safety. Some of them fell flat and began firing, evidently with automatic rifles or tommy-guns. Some of them fell flat and did nothing.

  Without thinking I was on my feet. “Let’s go,” I said.

  Bill yanked me down. “Our job is here,” he said.

  “But they need help!”

  “The best help we can give them is to see that they aren’t flanked,” Bill said. “Look!”

  They had thrown more flares down on the beach where the first attack was under way. It gave the whole coastline a weird, Fourth-of-July illumination. It showed up the prow of another small landing barge headed toward the beach below us. Bill’s hand, still gripping my wrist, was shaking slightly.

  The barge grated on bottom. The front end was pushed out to make a gangplank to the beach. They started coming, little, darting figures in steel helmets.

  “Here goes,” Bill said.

  The first burst from the machine gun was aimed too high. We could see foam cut in the sea about twenty yards out past the barge. The next one drew blood. I saw at least three of the helmeted figures fall, thrashing, in the shallow surf. But the rest came on, running for the safety of the cliff’s overhang. Rifles cricked on either side of me.

  “New belt,” Bill said grimly.

  I handed it to him, helped him feed it into the gun. I was all thumbs. Then something began biting chunks out of the rock right in front of me. There was a machine gun in the stern of the barge, and it was firing straight at the flashes from Bill’s gun. Then the whole island seemed to blow up about twenty feet behind me.

  “Hand grenade!” Bill said. Then he choked and coughed and let go with a couple more bursts from his own gun. Most of the scurrying Japs had come in so close under the overhang we couldn’t see them. Some of them who’d lost interest lay sprawled out on the beach. I thought, God, how quick it is!

  Then another grenade went off, much closer to us this time, and knocked me kicking. Every ounce of wind was sucked out of me, and I felt a warm trickle of blood down my cheek. Something had ripped a nice gash in my head. I remember thinking it was funny it didn’t hurt more.

  “We got to move, kid,” I heard Bill say in a muffled voice. “They’re getting the range.”

  He called orders to the other men, and then he and I staggered northward along the top of the cliff, carrying the machine gun between us. Another grenade went off behind us. I didn’t look to see if it had wiped out the spot where we’d been located seconds before.

  We flopped down with the gun behind a large rock. Bill got it set up and trained on the beach, but he didn’t fire. We couldn’t see moving figures any longer. But hell had broken loose all over the Island.

  “Sounds as though they’d tried to land in four or five places,” Bill said.

  There was still nothing from the destroyer off shore. I supposed she was withholding fire until she got some signal from the attacking force. Too much danger of blowing hell out of her own men.

  One of the men came crawling along on his stomach toward us. “Bill?”

  “What is it?”

  “Andrews was pretty badly hit by the last grenade. We ought to get him to the hospital.”

  “Damn!” Bill said. “It’ll take two of you.”

  “That’s right.”

  Bill turned to me. “Chris. This is Larry Connors. Will you help him with Andrews? You may see Cleave or O’Rourk and pick up fresh orders of some sort. I wish to God I’d studied tactics instead of foundering. These bastards are going to come swarming up over the cliff in a minute.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “If other men have been hurt there may be some extra rifles, or even bayonets. See if you can pick ’em up.”

  “Right,” I said. “Where’s Andrews?”

  I crawled along behind Connors to where the wounded man lay stretched out on the ground. He wasn’t making a sound, except that his breath made a whistling noise. I bent over him and he tried to smile. He showed tightly clenched teeth.

  “Chest wound,” Connors said. “We got to handle him easy, Mr. Wells.”

  Connors, thank God, had ideas. We hoisted Andrews up so that his back rested on Connors’ shoulder blades. I carried his feet. That way Connors and I could both walk forward and see where we were going. Andrews never whimpered, but I could feel his leg muscles tensing. The poor guy was suffering tortures.

  I heard the whine of a bullet, unpleasantly close, as we staggered into the woods and along a path we hoped would take us to the hospital. For a moment we must have been visible to the enemy. It was beginning to get gray in the east.

  Our sense of direction, or rather Connors’ sense of direction, must have been good because about five minutes later we came into a clearing directly in front of the hospital.

  There was one of those huge canvases hanging over the entrance to the underground sick-bay. We had to lower Andrews to the ground to get it open. Somehow we dragged him in and then both of us sat down on the ground, gasping for breath.

  Ellen Lucas materialized out of nowhere. She took one look at Andrews and said: “Get him in here, fast!”

  We picked him up again in aching arms and carried him into the main room. Alec had set up an impromptu operating table in the center of the room. He looked like a ghost in his white apron and cap, with his face almost the same color of white. There were at least a dozen other men there. Some of them were out cold. Some of them were sitting around, smoking, arms or heads or legs bandaged. We lowered Andrews onto the operating table at a signal from Alec. I was turning away when a cool hand touched my arm.

  “Chris! Chris, are you all right?”

  It was Jess. The sound of her voice did things to me. There was real concern in it; something I’d dreamed of hearing but never had. I looked down into her tired, drawn face.

  “I never got the chance to say it in words, angel,” I said. “I haven’t got time now.” I bent down and kissed her full in the lips. She didn’t say no in that one delirious moment. When I drew away she said, “Chris!” very softly.

  I saw Alec give me a ghastly grin as he waited for Ellen Lucas to cut away Andrews’ shirt. I found a cigarette in my pants pocket, lit it, and held it out to him. He spread his gloved hands. He couldn’t take it because they were sterilized. I held the cigarette to his lips myself.

  “How’s it going?” he asked. His voice sounded like a croaking frog’s. “If they keep bringing them in like this, Chris, we won’t be able to keep up with it.”

  “You got to keep up, chum,” I said. “After what just happened to me you got to keep up.”

  Just th
en the canvas flap was swept open and Cleave came in. He was stripped down to the waist and his lean, brown body was splashed with blood. Someone else’s blood.

  “How’s it going, sir?” I asked.

  “Four attacking points,” he said. “If we can hold them for another twenty minutes … ” He stopped, staring at me. “You had orders not to leave your bunkmate, Mr. Wells! Strict orders!”

  “I had to help with a wounded man, sir. Besides, Regan wanted orders if any.”

  “Your orders are to hold! We can’t stop to bring men in. Unless they can make it by themselves we can’t do anything about it,”

  “We haven’t very much left to fight with, sir.”

  “Then throw rocks at them!” Cleave blazed at me. “Don’t leave your post again, for any reason, Mr. Wells!”

  “Right, sir.”

  Connors and I stumbled out into the gray dawn.

  “You can’t just leave a guy there dying,” Connors grumbled.

  “I guess you can and must,” I said.

  It wasn’t really light enough to see more than shadows. As we reached the open near the. cliff we dropped down on our hands and knees and crawled. Bill and our particular group were not firing, but they were blazing away down at the far end of the Island.

  I flopped down beside Bill, strangely glad to find him still at his post. Cleave’s anger had upset me. I had no doubts about Bill any longer myself, but in the excitement of the moment I’d put him on the spot by leaving him alone. I told him what had happened.

  “The hell with it,” Bill said. “After that destroyer opens up, as she will as soon as there’s enough light, nobody’s going to stand trial for murder. She’s going to sit out there and blow our little pea shooters to hell. That’s why these babies on the beach haven’t tried to navigate the cliff. They’re waiting for a protective barrage.”

  “Bad as that?” I asked.

  “All we can do is lie flat and pray when they start dropping big shells on us,” Bill said. “Then our little yellow chums will come crawling up here with machine guns … maybe flame throwers … and finish the job.”

  It was just words. I said: “I kissed Jess back there at the hospital.”

  “Then you ought to die happy,” Bill said dryly.

  When something unexpectedly and overwhelmingly good happens to you it’s almost more of a shock than when something equally unexpected and overwhelmingly bad happens to you. I lay there, thinking of all the things I might have done with my life, now that there was Jess, if it hadn’t been for the blasted war, when I was literally lifted a foot off the ground by the most monumental explosion I’d ever heard.

  Out across the water there was a huge burst of flame. Suddenly against a background of flame, I saw hundreds of pieces of a naval vessel flying through the air. The sound of the explosion echoed and reverberated across the water. Then there were several more; smaller but nonetheless jarring, and more pieces of boat shot skyward. Then something knocked me flat. It was Bill’s fist landing squarely between my shoulders. He was yelling like a lunatic.

  “Chris! Chris, you son of a bitch! They’ve blown up the destroyer! They’ve blown her to hell and gone! Wasdell’s done it! Chris! CHRIS!”

  He was shaking me, pummeling me, laughing like a wild man.

  Of course we didn’t know how it had been managed then. We didn’t know that Wasdell had loaded an old motor launch with enough high explosive to sink a battlewagon; that he had steered out through the darkness, single-handed. That he had stayed at the wheel through a sudden hail of bullets from the destroyer that had by some miracle failed to hit either him or his load of destruction. We didn’t know that at the last minute, naked as the day he was born, he had dived over the side, after lashing the launch’s wheel. Seconds later the launch hit the destroyer broadside, and that was that. Nor did we know that some of his men had followed him, against orders, in a second launch and they’d fished him out of the sea, unconscious from the shock of the explosion, and dragged him up onto the overturned bottom of their own launch, which had been blown clean out of the water and capsized by the concussion.

  We didn’t know any of that, but we knew, and it seemed that every other man on the Island knew at the same time, that we had a chance.

  “Come on, sucker!” Bill yelled at me. “You may live to get married yet!”

  We went sliding down the side of the cliff with the machine gun clutched between us. Men seemed to appear out of holes in the ground, to follow up. Some of them brandished rifles. Some of them had nothing at all to fight with. Everyone seemed to be yelling at the top of his lungs.

  We hit the beach, completely disorganized. The Japs in our section were crouching behind a clump of rocks. I remember Bill walking toward them, laughing crazily, the machine gun trying to rip itself out of his hands as he kept it chattering. It should have been duck soup for the Japs to pick us off if they hadn’t been caught from the rear. I saw men rushing at them, headed by a giant, half-naked figure with a crowbar as his only weapon. It was big Joe Adams. The last thing I remember was seeing him, evidently standing astride a couple of rocks, flailing away with that crowbar at Japs who never had a chance to swing their rifles around into line. For just that moment Big Joe looked like the personification of all the angry men in the world seeking vengeance on a treacherous enemy.

  I don’t remember any more of that fight on the beach because something, which turned out to be a bullet, clipped me alongside the head and I went down and out … but out!

  V

  I woke up smelling ether and decided I was going to be sick. Ether always makes me sick. Then I realized that I hadn’t any of it myself. It was just thick in the air. I opened my eyes and saw two hazy faces looking down at me. They were both grinning like cartoons of Hirohito. I thought, I’ve been taken prisoner, for God sake. And then the mist faded away and it was Bill and Alec.

  “God takes care of fools, drunks, and guys in love,” Bill said.

  “Nuts!” I said. I meant to say it anyway, but something that sounded like a small mouse squeaking was the only result. I moved, and somebody lifted off the top of my head for a minute and then jammed it back on again. “Hey, take it easy!” I said.

  Alec laughed. “Get the hell out of here, Chris. You’re cluttering up my shop!”

  They helped me swing my feet over the side of the cot and sit up. Everything went spinning off into space for a moment and then settled down again.

  “Take him somewhere and get him a drink,” Alec said. “It just grazed you, kid,” he went on to me. “You’ll have a headache for a little while, but it’ll go away.”

  “Where’s Jess?” I said. “Is she all right?”

  “I had to send her to make a round of the quarters,” Alec said. “She couldn’t keep her mind on her work with you in here. Listen, I’ve got orders for you.”

  “What orders?”

  “Stay away from that gal till the rush is over. I need her.”

  Bill and I went out of the hospital together. It was one of the most beautiful days I ever saw. We headed for the mess hall, and everybody we passed looked grimy and tired, but they all had enormous grins plastered on their faces.

  Bill gave me the details of what had happened. There hadn’t been more than a hundred and fifty Japs in the various landing parties. We outnumbered them in man power, but they had it over us like a tent in equipment. Their strategy must have been just what Bill had figured. They meant to make their landings as quietly as possible, not realizing they were expected. At daylight the destroyer was to have opened fire, and under cover of that barrage they expected to clean up. Two things went wrong with their plan. They were expected, and the destroyer never opened fire, thanks to Commander Wasdell, who came out of his harrowing experience with nothing worse than a few cuts and bruises and a queazy stomach from swallowing about a gallon of salt water.

  When the destroyer blew, the men had all acted at once. The Japs, stunned by the sight of their ship going up in flame, never
got organized.

  “We didn’t take a single prisoner,” Bill said grimly.

  “What about our own casualties?”

  “Ten dead,” Bill said, “and about three dozen needing medical care — only a few in dangerous shape.”

  “Well, that’s that,” I said.

  Bill gave me a funny lock, and we walked in silence for a moment. Then he said, “One of our very best suspects is among the dead. Scotty Cameron got his. One of the Japs did a nasty piece of carving with a bayonet.”

  “Poor little guy,” I said. It didn’t seem real.

  We went into the mess hall. It was fairly well crowded. Mama O’Rourk, sporting the biggest beam of all, was shuffling out coffee and food. There was a row of thermos bottles at one end of the counter which some of the men took off with them to work.

  “That Wasdell is a slave driver,” Bill grinned. “No rest for the weary. He expects us to have his precious Seahorse afloat in nothing flat. A little thing like fighting a war with our bare hands doesn’t figure in his book at all.”

  We had some coffee and a couple of corn beef sandwiches. I began to feel better by leaps and bounds. Every time someone came in the door I looked up, hoping it might be Jess. It seemed to me that I couldn’t wait another minute to see her and to get our lives straightened out. That kiss had been enough to convince me I had a chance to sell myself to her.

  But it wasn’t to be. I’d just finished my second sandwich and my third cup of coffee when one of the marines came in and over to our table.

  “Captain Cleave would like to see you in his office, Mr. Wells, if you’re feeling up to it.”

  “Right away,” I said. Then I said to Bill: “Everybody on this God damn island seems to be on a treadmill.”

  Bill chuckled. “You’ll catch up, with her yet, kid,” he said. “Wait till I get a thermos of coffee, and I’ll walk along with you.”

  We went out together. Bill went on to the foundry, where Wasdell was probably champing at the bit, waiting for him, and I turned into Cleave’s office. There I found the captain and Bradley.