The Final Storm

by Jeff Shaara

  “Now!”

  The word punched him, close to his ear, and he seemed to wake, blinked through rain in his eyes.

  “What?”

  “Move out, Private. You waiting for a taxi?”

  It was Ferucci, and Adams realized others were close beside him, the familiar smell of Welty, distinct now, a low voice, “Got him, Sarge. Let’s move out.”

  Adams felt his feet in motion, tried to blink through the fog in his brain, heard Welty beside him.

  “You going crackers, sport? What’s so funny?”

  Adams tried to sort out his friend’s words, said, “What? Nothing.”

  “You were laughing like hell, couldn’t get you to stop. The looey was about to call for the doc to check you out.”

  Adams felt his head clearing, the march awakening him, the thumping weight of the grenades throbbing against him with each step. He had a surge of panic, thought of the crack-ups. No, God no. Not now. Can’t leave these guys. He sorted through the officer’s words, a hill to take, our guys up there. Wounded. That’s bad. Gotta help ’em out.

  “I’m okay. Just fell asleep I guess.”

  “Here. Eat this.”

  Adams took the cracker, softened by the rain, felt a different rumbling in his gut, healthier. It was actual hunger. He wolfed down the cracker, said, “Damn. Pretty good. You got more?”

  “You’ve got plenty, you idiot. Your backpack’s full of K rations. I saw ’em. No time to eat now. We’ve gotta move. Somewhere, another hill. Light’s coming soon.”

  The clarity seemed to flow through him, and he put a hand on a pocket of his jacket, felt a heavy wad of grenades. Good.

  “You got a D ration?”

  “Jesus, Clay. Been trying to feed you for days. Now you’re hungry? Hang on, I’ll grab one out of your pack. I know damn well you’ve got those too.”

  Welty reached under the poncho, pulled something from Adams’s backpack, stuffed it in his hand. Adams ripped off the thin cardboard, stuffed it in his mouth. The chocolate bar was syrupy and delicious, and Adams felt an urgent need to eat a dozen more.

  “Shut up! Space out!”

  Adams knew Ferucci’s growl, savored the last thick taste of the chocolate, felt energized now, clamped his arm against the M-1 that hung from his shoulder. He raised his head, peered out past the hood of his poncho, saw the green glow of a distant flare, a clear image of the hill. But the sky was lightening, the first hint of sunrise, and he realized the rain had stopped. The men in front of him were visible now, shapes more clear, helmets and ponchos, rifle barrels, one man with a BAR slung up on his shoulder. More columns marched out beside them, a few yards away, and he saw a machine gun crew, three men, hauling the weapon, with the tripod and ammunition boxes. He looked out the other way, saw faces mostly looking down, the men spaced apart, more columns, all moving together, realized they were in the hundreds. The officer’s words came back to him, battalion. That’s us. Several companies. All going … where? A hill. He looked forward again, fog and mist, but the sounds were increasing, louder, the steady chatter of machine guns. He felt his heart beginning to race with a new energy, something he hadn’t felt before. He could see only glimpses of the hill, the fog thick, drifting. The machine gun fire opened up suddenly to the right, from some hidden place, some of it American, hard shocks from artillery shells coming down far into the fog. More of us, he thought. He shivered, the wetness still chilling him, but the excitement was growing as well. Across the rolling fields, in every direction, Marines were moving as he was, toward the same place, the fight that continued to spread out all across the ground he couldn’t see. He wanted to run, to jog, the aching stiffness in his legs gone, the energy building. It’s time, Clay. Look at these guys. And the Japs. They gotta know we’re coming. The fear was still there, the officer’s words coming back. So, this is very bad. We’re chewed up. They’re killing corpsmen, for God’s sake. Scrub the hill. He thought of a prayer, something he rarely did, but he couldn’t form the words, nothing meaningful. God doesn’t care, he thought. This is about men. Kill the bastards. We’ll tell God about it later.

  The scream of an artillery shell came straight past him, coming down close behind. More came now, hints of red streaks in the dull light, coming toward them from far to the left. The calls went out, the men hurrying their pace, the impacts coming in closer, enemy gunners in far places finding the range. But there was no cover, no stopping, no orders to dig in. He saw Porter doing as others did, waving his men forward. Adams crossed a two-rut trail, a road thick with mud, the wreckage of a jeep, something else, black metal, destroyed, swallowed by the mud. Beyond the narrow road was open ground, and through black smoke he could see a round pit, nothing like a shell hole. It was wide and clear, and men were moving down into the natural cover. The edges were neatly formed, concrete in a circular arc. He had seen this before, in the north, one of the many tombs the Okinawan people had constructed for the interment of their ancestors. The C-shaped depressions were a natural defense for avoiding shrapnel, but as every lieutenant had pointed out, a direct hit would likely shred every man in the depressed hole. The sergeants were moving quickly now, cursing shouts at the men to get up out of the concrete cover, to keep up the advance. Some obeyed, but Adams saw others, lumps of green, helmets and ponchos, sitting motionless against the low solid walls, too terrified to move. He ignored them, could not be angry at them, knew the fear, the terror, tried not to think of that. The tombs were everywhere, like some oversized cemetery, spread out across the open ground. Each one held men now, the shellfire driving them into cover. Adams wanted to follow, pure instinct, the luscious allure of a concrete wall, saw Porter yelling something, waving still, pulling his men past one of the round gaping maws. Above all the sounds, one rose, louder, the freight-train roar coming closer. Adams didn’t hesitate, dropped flat, the shell passing close to one side, erupting with a deafening concussion of fire and smoke directly in the arc of the closest tomb. He hugged the muddy ground for a long second, the ringing in his ears sharp, painful, but he saw men rising up, Porter again. The lieutenant was moving back through his men, grabbing them, pushing them forward, and Adams saw his face, furious eyes, a glimpse back at Adams, a sharp nod, words, and Adams was up again, blew mud from his mouth, breathed in a lungful of smoke, fought it with a violent cough. He looked toward the tomb, concrete in huge pieces, scattered around a smear of black in the circular arc, pieces of … men.

  “Move!”

  “No stopping! Keep moving!”

  He kept his eyes on the bloody awful scene, boots and a gathering pool of black … something. He turned away, tried to find the energy, saw Porter again. Adams saw him look into what remained of the tomb, of the men who had sought safety there. Adams felt a punch of fear. Who? Does he know? But there was no time for that, the lieutenant waving again, pushing his men past the awful scene. The shellfire came down in a new pattern now, to one side, splattering rhythmically into the muddy ground, bursts of water and dirt tossed skyward. One shell struck a piece of steel wreckage, and he saw men going down around it, like petals of a flower, blown out by the burst of shrapnel. Adams tried to ignore that, pushed his legs forward, searched for Porter, anyone familiar, but there were no faces, just smoke and mud and fire. The hill was close, squatting in the rolling plain like a fat loaf of bread, no more than forty yards high. Out in front of the hill there was no cover at all, just a gently sloping plain, streaks of tracer fire ripping across from several directions. On the hill itself came flashes from the muzzles of a hundred rifles, more, every rocky hole alive with men and guns. He hunched his shoulders, as though fighting off the rain, ran forward, following another man, rapid steps, muddy splashes, saw a fat rock at the base of the hill, men huddled low. Behind it one man was lying flat, blood on his head, the uniform ripped away, the man’s arm … gone. Machine guns ripped the air all around him, pinging on the rocks, the smell of burnt coral, the pop and whine of rifle fire, mortar shells coming down all out across the
open ground behind them. Adams glanced around, panicked, didn’t know what to do, saw men falling around him, some diving for bits of shelter, some just collapsing. He leapt past the rock, saw men climbing, this hill so much like the one before, deep crevices and shallow cracks, overhanging rocks and jagged edges of coral. The smoke was thick, blinding, suffocating, every kind of projectile flying past, steel and rock. The blasts were growing in number, fiery eruptions small and large, the thumps and thuds and cracks blending together into one great deafening roar, punctuated by screams, shouts, the broad hillside its own perfect hell.

  The bombing and shelling of the hill from American air strikes and naval guns had gone on for several days, long before the Marines had actually reached the hill itself. American artillerymen and tankers had naturally assumed they had so badly damaged the Japanese position that few of the enemy would be left to offer any kind of heavy resistance. That foolishness had been erased days before as the Sixth Division’s Twenty-ninth Regiment and one battalion of the Twenty-second had attempted to capture the position, only to be ripped apart by the mostly unseen enemy. With those Marines so badly mauled, another battalion of the Twenty-second had been ordered in to make another attempt, continuing what had become a massive slow-footed assault against the entire Japanese defenses, what the maps now labeled the Shuri Line.

  But Hill Two was becoming more than just a number on a map. The network of hills that lay behind it was part of the interconnecting defenses that ran in an undulating line through the Japanese strongholds that belted the entire southern half of the island, the extraordinary defensive wall created by General Ushijima, crafted by the perfect efficiency of Colonel Yahara. Since the American command had dismissed the notion of bypassing the line with amphibious assaults, General Buckner’s troops were under orders that made it clear that if the Japanese defenses were to be broken, it would be up to the two army divisions now to the east, the Seventh and the Ninety-sixth, and the two Marine divisions, the First and the Sixth, to ram headlong into whatever the Japanese had prepared for them. Against Ushijima’s eastern defenses, the army divisions faced the same kinds of bloody challenges, while in the center, the First Marines pushed toward the enormous stronghold anchored by Shuri Castle. But none of the Americans were finding easy success. In the west, what was now the right flank of the American drive, the Sixth Marine Division was charged still with securing the low hills that offered artillery protection for the city of Naha, and then capturing Naha itself. But the rugged rocky formations held far more power than the Marines had expected. Once they finally rolled over Charlie Hill, they encountered a larger, more elaborate section of the Japanese defenses, the maps showing only a series of low hills that seemed to resemble an arrowhead, aimed directly at their advance. With perfectly interconnecting fields of fire from the three hills, the Japanese had anticipated that any American assault would be decimated before any of the hills could be taken at all. Thus far, they had been right.

  With orders to continue, the American field officers directed the attacks from command posts where the smoke ran thick. Those men did more of their work with binoculars than maps, and so the numbers and grid lines were not as important as what they could see for themselves. Quickly, labels on maps were replaced by names that more perfectly described the shapes of the obstacles the officers and their men could actually see. The names were mostly innocuous, but they gave memory to the struggles, would resonate with the fighting men far more than any simple number. Across the rear of the arrowhead, the larger, more spread-out promontories were now referred to as the Half Moon and the Horseshoe, each one labeled with perfect obviousness. But at the point, Hill Two was very different. Some described it as a half watermelon, a red-rock dome that rose little more than fifty feet high and three hundred yards long. But the name that stuck, the name the Marines would remember, was Sugar Loaf Hill.

  SUGAR LOAF HILL, EAST OF NAHA, OKINAWA

  MAY 14, 1945

  They made progress in inches, feeling their way up into any kind of low cover, but no hole was safe, no rock or slash in the coral secure. The hill was draped and shattered with shellfire, small arms close by, artillery shells coming down on the Marines from distant caves, mortar shells impacting from knee mortars that could be anywhere at all. The low hilly formations beyond Sugar Loaf might have seemed to be an arrowhead, but to the Japanese artillery officers they created the other two points of a triangle, each one offering hidden gunners easy range toward the entire position, protecting the Japanese soldiers who the Marines now realized were right beneath them. Sugar Loaf Hill was hardly a solid chunk of rock. The Marines were assaulted from a network of caves and tunnels that made the hill more like a great fat honeycomb, hollow in ways the Marines were just figuring out. For most of the day they had no choice but to lie flat, seeking cover while trying to fight an enemy who might be anywhere at all. Some who had managed to reach the ragged rocks higher up the slope soon found rifle fire coming at them from behind, Japanese troops firing through narrow slits and spider holes that a man could step right over. Out in the open fields, American tanks attempted to drive close, but other than scattered shots at fleeting glimpses of targets, the gunners had little to do. The Marines were spreading out right in the midst of their enemy, and any shellfire would just as likely kill friend as foe. Worse for the tanks, the Marine riflemen who had been ordered to stay close, protecting the armor from suicidal Japanese soldiers, found that the tanks offered no protection at all from the impact of mortar shells. The tanks themselves were immediately vulnerable to a new threat, expertly aimed anti-tank weapons, fired, like everything else, from carefully disguised positions. Realizing their chaotic predicament, the tanks that were not quickly destroyed were forced to withdraw, seeking shelter far back from the network of hills. Most of the Marines were too occupied with survival and raw combat to notice that the tanks had left them to fight on alone. But any Marines who remained out on the open ground, or who attempted to reach the base of the hill, suffered the worst. With nowhere to hide, many of them were simply swept away in a storm of fire.

  The rain came again, but only a brief shower, muddying the already wet soil beneath him. Adams had squeezed himself between two sharp rocks, filling a gap no more than the width of his chest, the ledge beneath his feet less than a yard wide. Around him men were firing in every direction, some lying flat in shallow remnants of burned brush, others rolling over in the mud, then rolling again, trying desperately to avoid the enemy fire as they fought in the wide open. Adams had reached the narrow ledge by climbing up past several of the other men, no one paying any attention, each man fighting his own war. He had given himself a single minute of rest, trying to catch his breath, to gather his senses, the roar of shellfire and weapons around him relentless. After a painful moment he loosened himself from the tight squeeze, struggled to pull a clip from the belt across his chest, rammed it into the M-1, stared straight up, a craggy rock jutting out a few feet over his head. There had been a stream of fire coming from above the rock, and he was close enough to hear hints of shouting in Japanese. Already Adams had tried to warn anyone who drew close, but his own shouts were useless, drowned out by the noise, the men below him mostly beyond his sight, focused solely on avoiding the steady storms of machine gun fire. A fresh cloud of smoke flowed along the face of the hill, settling into low pockets in the rough rock, and he struggled to breathe, the smoke offering momentary cover to the men most vulnerable. He saw flickers of motion, some of the Marines below him trying to move up, to advance away from the flatter depressions, several climbing up where he could see them. There were familiar faces, all of them plastered with dirt and sweat, staring up and out with wide-eyed terror. To one side, beyond the rock that jammed against him, he knew Yablonski was there, and close below him, Gridley had the BAR. Adams caught a glimpse of the big man’s helmet, had seen Pop Gorman’s face, a brief glimpse of the man who fed the BAR, more fear than Adams wanted to see. Within his limited field of vision, Adams caught sigh
t of rifle barrels, heard the close rattle of a thirty-caliber machine gun, a crew somehow hauling their weapon up through the rocks. In the moments of calm, brief seconds of silence, Yablonski’s curses came from the left side of him, a chorus of furious yelling, more frustration than anger. Adams couldn’t see where he had gone, what kind of cover he had found, but Yablonski was firing his M-1 in a manic attack all his own. Whether Yablonski had any actual targets, Adams had no idea.

  He leaned slightly away from the rocks, the rifle ready, no one in sight but glimpses of Marines. He realized he hadn’t seen Ferucci since the climb had started, or Welty, had no time to pay attention to faces and names as he scrambled up into cover. Above him there had been a steady mix of Nambu fire and the distinct pop of a carbine, plus scattered rounds coming from M-1s in places Adams had not yet seen. He thought of Porter, hadn’t seen him either, felt the usual stab of panic, thought, if he’s dead … what do we do? How in hell does anybody give orders up here? His brain fought with itself, forcing his panic away. Just do what he said. Climb. Get to the top. Kill Japs. He repeated that to himself. Kill Japs. But you’re safe here. Right here. Maybe. The bastards are everywhere. But so are we. This is stupid as hell! Is this what we’re supposed to do? Porter would know. Welty knows. He’s done this before. Where the hell is he? He can’t be dead. Can’t be. Dammit, I can’t just stay here.

  From his wedged-in position, Adams could see nothing but smoke, movement out to one side, in one low depression, the thirty-caliber, the men changing position, one man holding two ammo boxes. Good. Ammo. Use it! The man suddenly crumpled, as though the boxes were too heavy, dragging him down at the knees, but Adams shook his head, one word, “No!”