The Final Storm

by Jeff Shaara

  APRIL 13, 1945

  DAWN

  There had been no sleep for Adams, the night creeping past in an agonizing torrent of images, waking nightmares that skipped through his mind, scenes of blood and death, questions of what they would see in the light. The darkness had been alive with motion, his imagination playing terrifying games, dancing figures in the dark, small brush suddenly running away, then there again, unmoving. With the first hint of gray, he had cursed anxiously at the darkness to go away, felt desperate relief as the ground revealed itself. His vision increased by the minute and by the foot, finally to where Yablonski and Gridley lay, then farther, a dull shadow taking shape, more, until the images were no longer just in his mind. Beside Yablonski’s foxhole lay the dead soldier, blood all through his uniform, Yablonski’s manic work with the knife more efficient than it needed to be. In front of Adams lay another Japanese body, no more than twenty yards away. With more daylight the man’s dark form took shape, and Adams could see that the man had no head, everything above his shoulders a bloody mass of shredded cloth and skin. On both sides helmets were rising up, the rest of the platoon taking it in, the daylight erasing the nightmares. To the left, out in front of the next squad, he saw a third body, bareheaded, lying faceup, his arms twisted in some bizarre contortion, as though the man had tried to tie himself in a knot.

  “Nobody move. Stay down in your damn holes! Remember those machine guns!”

  The men to that side obeyed their sergeant’s command, even the most curious settling back into the ground. The talk began now.

  “We got ’em!”

  “Hell, I got him! He was right in front of me!”

  “One got himself!”

  Adams settled back into the hole, sat, saw Welty doing the same, the redhead now digging into his backpack.

  “Chocolate bar? I got plenty.”

  “No thanks. God, did you see the one right out front? What do you think happened?”

  Welty looked at him, and Adams could see the man’s face, just enough light to show the reflection of his glasses. Welty said, “Seen it before. Jap goes to throw his grenade and the fuse goes off too soon. Blew his damn head off. Their grenades must be crap.”

  “Wonder where he was throwing it?”

  “Don’t. Doesn’t matter.”

  “I saw three dead ones. Think there were more?”

  “Yep.”

  Welty ripped open the cardboard of the K ration box, scattered the contents beside him. He poked, appraising, said, “God, I could use some coffee.”

  Adams felt grit in his mouth, his tongue like cotton.

  “I need water. My canteens are empty.”

  Welty said nothing, and Adams thought, if he could spare some, he would say so. There’s gotta be a water truck or some barrels around here somewhere close.

  Welty put a thick cracker in his mouth, said, “The CP’s not too far behind us. Captain will make sure we get some water.”

  To one side, a voice called out.

  “Holy God! Would you look at that!”

  Adams heard a hoot, another man, “I’ll be! Take a look at that! She come for breakfast?”

  Adams peeked up, saw the woman now, walking across the open ground, a slow march closer to the foxholes. He could see her short black hair, could tell she was young, small and thin. But he could see clearly that she was not a child. She was naked.

  Other hoots came now, her audience appreciative, curious, some of the comments vulgar, and now, one man was up, moving toward her, took off his helmet, made a mock bow. The girl kept walking, closer, and Adams could see more details, her face showing nothing, staring straight ahead, doing her best to ignore the calls of the stunned men around her. Another man rose, then his buddy, crawling up from their hole, and the man waved the others back, said with authority, “Back off. We’ll wrap her up in something.”

  And now one more voice above the clamor, the lieutenant.

  “Get the hell away from her! Get back in your—”

  The shots came now, slow and precise, single pops in the distance, the dull crack of lead as the carefully aimed shots impacted each of the men. They dropped in perfect rhythm, one by one, tumbling clumsily, helmets rolling away, motionless, the voices gone, the vulgar hoots replaced by the sounds of horror in the men who watched, surprise and fury. The girl was still there, paralyzed, standing with her eyes closed, and then there was one more shot, and Adams saw the girl collapse. He felt a hand on his arm, a hard tug, Welty yanking him into the hole.

  “Get down!”

  He felt queasy shock, wanted to see, and Welty rose up, kept his hand on Adams’s shoulder, holding him down.

  “Snipers! Nobody’s moving.”

  The order came in a manic high pitch, the voice of the lieutenant.

  “Goddammit, stay put! It came from those far trees!”

  Adams heard Porter’s voice again, this time low in his foxhole, and Welty said, “He’s on the walkie-talkie. We need some help. Maybe some 75s, or some tin cans. Somebody needs to blow hell out of that tree line.” Welty paused. “God bless those damn fools.”

  The tanks rolled close, a half-dozen machines, rising up off the road, spreading into formation. Adams could smell the exhaust fumes, smoke trailing each of the Shermans, and around him the men responded, the lieutenant pulling them up from their cover, advancing them toward the distant tree lines. The men were pulled into packs close behind the tanks, natural instinct, no one objecting. Behind them the officers had gathered briefly in a shallow gully, kneeling low. Adams was close to Welty, Ferucci guiding them into line, the sergeant staring back where the officers spoke, and Adams ignored that, looked across the open ground to the cluster of bodies, the four Marines now wrapped in ponchos, only their boots protruding. The girl was there too, a piece of cloth tossed across her, someone’s gesture of decency that seemed to contradict the obscenity of what she had been made to do. Adams had stepped past her, had seen the thin legs, the prettiness of her face only partly covered. He had focused more on the stain of blood on the cloth, thought, no one volunteers for that. She’s got to be an Okie. Behind him a man moved up to the bodies, stopped, and Adams hesitated, saw his face, older, sad eyes, the man making a brief sign of the cross. Adams knew him, the chaplain, nodded toward the man, got no response, the chaplain’s attention on the bodies.

  “Get moving!”

  Adams turned, saw Ferucci waving at him, moved away, thought, nothing I can say … the chappy knows his job. Didn’t even know he was out here.

  The services had been conducted somewhere every Sunday, even on the Sunday two weeks before when they began the invasion. Then, the chaplain had been on the ship, administering a ritual to anyone who cared for it. There had been many that day, many more than usual, and Adams had assumed that a chaplain shouldn’t cross the beach until it was secure. But the man was there now, doing his job. Adams had a curiosity about the girl, wondered if the chaplain would say something for her. Well, yeah, we’re all God’s children, all of that. She ended up as bait. Wonder what God thinks of that?

  Adams saw Welty waiting for him, the tanks slowly moving away, and Adams pushed himself forward, realized the lieutenant was up beside him, moving fast, taking himself to the front of his platoon. Adams was swallowed by the exhaust, the agony in his stomach only worse, worse still by what had happened to the four Marines. He fought through the sights and sounds, the girl, the utter shock of that, felt more angry at the men who died than the enemy. We did just what the Japs thought we’d do. We’d either ogle her and be jackasses, or we’d try to help her. Either way, we’d let down, for just a second. Who can just pretend there’s not a naked girl walking by? Smart sons of bitches. And then they were done with her. She was just … another weapon.

  There had been no more from the Japanese since the Marines were killed, since the sun had risen completely. The Marines had poured out their own anger in a storm of fire from the M-1s and BARs, a machine gun battery moving up as well, a half-dozen
thirty calibers peppering anyplace where the Japanese might be. No one knew if there had been any effect from that, but the firing had released the anger, and when word came quickly that the Shermans were coming, the men had responded with cheers.

  A gust of wind took the exhaust smoke away, and Adams could see the ground in front of them clearly now, the pine trees and low squat palms. One of the Shermans erupted in machine gun fire, blasting a cluster of palms. The men on foot gathered closer, no one sure what to do, no targets. The Sherman closest to Adams suddenly accelerated, the turret shifting to one side, its cannon cutting loose. The explosion burst into a clump of short trees, fire, smoke, and then three more tanks began to fire, ripping away at the strand of woods. The Marines were being left back, and no one ran to keep up, the tanks suddenly taking full command, turning, maneuvering, one crushing right through the palms, more machine gun fire, all of it from the Shermans.

  Adams felt a hand on his shoulder, startled, turned, saw Ferucci, pointing back. He saw now, behind them, a row of amphtracs moving up, the vehicles that had carried some of them in from the ships. Now they were rolling on land, each one equipped with a heavy machine gun, a fifty caliber, the crews inside protected by the steel bulkheads. The first amphtrac rolled by, men looking out at the Marines, fists pumping the air, any cheers silenced by the belching roars of the engines. The amphibious machines moved up closer to the tanks, and around him the Marines were called forward as well, the lieutenants continuing the advance. But the M-1s were silent. The larger machines were doing the work. The battle seemed to spread out farther, the tanks fanning outward. Around him the Marines continued their advance through the trees, wood and grass fires boiling up around them, the stink of explosives, and beyond, the tree lines gave way to upsloping ground, the larger hills. But the tree line had been cleared and the tanks stopped their advance, curled around, came together in a formation, keeping a safe distance between them, poised in a soft chugging of their engines, the amphtracs doing the same. Adams saw Porter waving him forward, heard pops of rifle fire, men shooting straight down into holes in the ground. He searched frantically, the words etched into his brain, the lieutenant’s description, spider holes. Close to one side an amphtrac had halted, lowered the wide steel door, six men pouring out, keeping together in pairs. Adams saw the fat tanks on the men’s backs, the strange weapon they carried, like a thin rifle, but it was no rifle at all. It was a flamethrower.

  The battle had been brief and mostly one-sided. The Marines had found targets, but not many, and the work had been done mostly by the tankers and the flamethrowers, few Japanese soldiers willing to come up to the surface to fight on terms the fresher recruits had expected. For many there was little to do but wait and pick out targets as they emerged from the caves. Some came out as prisoners, but not many. The Japanese who emerged with their weapons did not live long enough to aim them, some holding grenades they never had a chance to throw. But those had been few as well. There was no way to know how many of the enemy were in the ground around them, and how many might still be alive. But Adams had watched with horrified fascination as the liquid flames shot deep into the small cavelike tunnels, and the one-man spider holes were either empty or held the body of a Japanese soldier too stubborn to run away.

  With the fight drawing to a close, the artillery batteries had been brought closer, the distant hills now splattered in a cascade of fire, aided by the good work of the dive-bombers from the carriers offshore. The Marines were pulled back, Captain Bennett’s company regrouping on the flat ground above the beach, ground that was too familiar. To everyone’s relief, the bodies of the four Marines had been removed, and one of the foxholes had been filled in, marked by a trail of stained brown dirt that Adams had to guess was all that remained of the girl. Before the darkness came again, there were more officers, jeeps and amphtracs, command posts set up, aid stations for those few who had been wounded in the attack on the Japanese positions. As the men settled back into their makeshift encampment, there had been a shocking surprise, which not even the officers expected. Along the beaches, small patrol boats moved in close, some of the Marines not even noticing them until the voices came, broadcast on loudspeakers. The men who worked at their foxholes were brought to a halt, no sergeants griping, no orders from the lieutenants. The loudspeakers carried a message, a solemn announcement that no one could ignore. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died.

  Like most of those around him, Adams knew little of the man beyond what he had heard on the radio, or what the newsreels showed, a president who was more like a kindly grandfather than their commander in chief. After Pearl Harbor, it had been Roosevelt’s words that inspired Adams to join the Marines, inspiration shared by hundreds of thousands of young men across the country, including many of those who shared the foxholes above the beach. The announcement threw a strange cloud over the men, some of them reacting by not reacting at all, others invigorated to work harder, to dig the foxhole deeper, better. Some just sat and cried, as though they had truly lost a member of their family. No one interrupted that, there was no teasing, no embarrassment to anyone who had grown up knowing no other name who meant so much to the nation. After a time the emotions passed, replaced by a silent gloom, and there were few conversations, almost no one thinking about the new man in charge, most not even knowing that his name was Truman. With the fading daylight the Marines climbed down into their holes, awaiting the darkness again, staring at shadows, keeping watch against the infiltrators, fighting the panic and the nightmares that rolled through them all night long.

  And the next night, they would do it all again.

  13. NIMITZ

  For the next several days, the fights rolled northward, the Japanese making their stands in a way that only invited defeat. Rather than attack the Americans with guile and sound tactics, the Japanese mostly held their ground, and were overwhelmed by the crushing superiority of the Marine tanks, artillery, and naval aircraft. Each night the infiltrators would come, small-scale strikes against the dug-in Marines, rattling the nerves and trigger fingers of the men who were suffering mostly from heat and the lack of sleep. But the Japanese seemed content to wage a piecemeal war, rather than the massed horror of the banzai assaults, the chaotic slaughter that so many of the veterans had seen before.

  As the Japanese withdrew or were crushed by sheer strength of arms, the Marines continued to exceed their own timetables, pushing toward the northern tip of Okinawa far ahead of schedule. To the Marine commanders, who had feared the kind of casualty counts that had come on Iwo Jima, the lack of a stout Japanese effort was welcome.

  On the Motobu Peninsula the job for the Fourth and Twenty-ninth Marine regiments had been costly. The enemy had seemed far more willing to offer a sharp struggle on a piece of land that was subject to ongoing bombardments from air and sea, as well as the relentless push by the Marines. The casualty counts had been somewhat severe, but by April 20 the peninsula was declared secure. The combat units who had taken punishment were allowed some rest and refitting, while the remainder of the Sixth Division and the bulk of the First continued driving north. Up the spine of the island, the Marines did their job, made a relentless push into whatever enemy they could find, or whatever resistance was thrown up in their paths.

  Despite ongoing mop-up operations, the success in securing the Motobu Peninsula allowed General Buckner an opportunity to crow about a victory, and so crow he did. But the news that reached Nimitz was not all good. To the south the first two army divisions had been bolstered by their reserves, but all three were becoming bogged down against a far stronger Japanese effort. Though no one in the American command had been able to predict exactly what the Japanese strategy would be, it was increasingly apparent that General Ushijima had positioned his greatest defensive strength in the south, along the line that ran from Shuri Castle westward to the Okinawan coast. General Buckner painted an optimistic portrait, but Nimitz was hearing something very different from the naval commanders, particularly Admiral Turn
er, whose ships were bearing the brunt of the increasingly destructive kamikaze attacks. With the army’s casualties mounting on land, and Turner’s sailors beginning to absorb a horrifying pounding offshore, Nimitz could no longer accept Buckner’s assurances that everything was going according to Buckner’s planning. With obvious friction growing between army and navy commanders, Nimitz knew the time had come to see the situation for himself. He would go to Okinawa.

  The kamikaze attacks had come continuously, though some were small in scale, sometimes a single aircraft. But it had become clear that there was a method to the Japanese tactics. Every seven to eight days now the attacks were launched toward the American fleet in a massive wave, hundreds of aircraft of every imaginable type ramming their way through the American defenses. The destruction was becoming astonishing, both on board the ships and to the Japanese pilots, almost none of whom survived. Throughout the war, naval casualties had been comparably light, even during the most brutal battles in the Coral Sea and at Leyte Gulf. But now the navy was absorbing losses they had never experienced, and though the most prized targets, the battleships and carriers, had taken some hits, it was the smaller escort and supply ships that were receiving the worst punishment. Dozens of American ships were being sent to the bottom, along with far too many crewmen. The losses were doubly horrifying because they had been so unexpected, and yet the Americans continued to be baffled by Japanese logic. If Tokyo had any expectation that their planes would either destroy the American fleet or drive them away from Okinawa, the tactics being used seemed gruesomely absurd. Radar and lookout stations monitored the incoming waves of Japanese planes, allowing gunners on board the American ships to prepare for the onslaught. The carrier aircraft could combat the incoming Japanese waves before the kamikaze pilots could even see their targets. With Japanese losses in aircraft numbering in the hundreds, the Americans had to wonder just how much more of this kind of attack the Japanese could mount. The loss in pilots alone had to mean that the planes were being flown by men with minimal training, whose sole mission was to end their lives by a desperate gamble that Americans would die in the process. The number of aircraft the Japanese were losing added to the mystery. How many more planes could the Japanese air force sacrifice before they simply ran out?