by Homer Hickam
During a lull in the bombardment, Burr began to lecture Josh and anyone else within the range of his voice, which meant most of the ship, even down in the boiler room, about his beloved marines. “War may be the Corps’s vocation, Thurlow,” he roared, “but glory is our real work. The navy knows that and is pleased to allow us marines to occasionally wade in glorious blood, though it ain’t pretty to them in their crisp whites and polished decks. We will be victorious this day, make no mistake, and the harder the enemy fights, I say, all the better. Through hardship comes experience and knowledge. Through adversity comes strength and greatness. Through privation comes triumph and glory!”
“Glory, Montague?” Josh replied, maintaining his mild tone. “Do you really think these young gents about to go ashore are as fond of glory as you and the other professionals of the Corps?”
Burr stared at the wounded atoll, which seemed adrift in smoke and flame. “Now listen to me carefully, Thurlow,” he said in a low growl. “I followed you out here to tell you to keep your yap shut. I won’t have you infecting these marines with your defeatist nonsense. You ain’t part of this operation. Don’t forget that.”
Before Josh could reply, the dawn was again shattered, this time by the battleship USS Maryland, old, obsolete, bombed and sunk at Pearl Harbor, but by God afloat again to fight another day. In a gigantic broadside, the warship erupted with a bone-rattling display of her power. A mighty spew of plumed orange and white smoke flew away from her, and the sky seemed to fall apart like a window struck by a flying brick. Then Betio seemed to be gripped by an earthquake as the shells struck, the atoll trembling beneath a storm of dust and sand.
“Oh, God love you, old girl,” Burr admired, beaming in rapture at the resurrected vessel. “Pound ‘em into dust, my darling!”
Standing around the bridge high above the deck, the J. Wesley Claytons duty officers were cheering, goading the huge shells to fly straight and true. But straight was the problem, in Josh’s view. “You know your artillery theory, Montague,” he persisted. “Those shells are on a flat trajectory. They’re throwing up sand, I’ll warrant, but they’re not digging Jap out of his hidey-holes. If the navy would back off and raise their tubes, the shells would come down at a steeper angle and penetrate the sand before exploding. I think Jap’s just hunkered down right now behind and beneath all that sand, waiting us out.”
Contradicting Josh, there was a sudden explosion on the island, sending a massive shock wave flying across the water, so thick that Josh and Burr could feel the pressure on their faces. Burr laughed out loud. “As per usual, you’re wrong, Thurlow!”
Josh caught a whiff of the acid stink of exploded gunpowder, the odor conjuring up the terrible battles he’d fought over the years against his country’s various enemies. “There’s still that dodging tide,” he remarked stubbornly.
“What in God’s fucking underpants is a dodging tide? You keep repeating that damnable phrase!”
Josh was always a patient teacher of the sea, especially with marines who thought the ocean but a nuisance across which they had to endure in order to get at the throats of the enemy. “There’s spring tides, neap tides, and dodges,” he explained. “It all has to do with the sun and the moon and where they are to one another. When both of them big fellows line up and start pulling in tandem, you’ve got a dodging tide, and, as bad luck would have it, Montague, that’s what you’ve got on that atoll before us right now. That means this very minute the tide’s going out, way out, and the reefs are rising. Soon they’ll be as dry as your Aunt Sally’s picket fence, and your boys will have to get over them.”
Burr spat a brown stream of tobacco juice over the side. His temper was not helped when a good portion of it blew back in his face. He used the sleeve of his crisp new camouflage utilities to wipe his face, then spat again for good measure, this time with the wind. “Again, you’re wrong. We’ll get over the reef with our amtracs and then we’ll dig out the few Japs left alive after this barrage and we’ll kill them, see, and bury them. All in a morning’s work.”
Josh knew he was wasting his breath, had known it all along. A kind of desperation had made him voice his fears even though he knew Burr was too low on the totem pole to do anything about them. Josh had seen it happen before, a kind of momentum that took hold during the planning of an operation that buried errors in judgment beneath wishful thinking. Since Guadalcanal, it was the belief of every navy and Marine Corps staff officer that their marines could overcome any obstacle, including poor tactics. But Josh loved his history and knew Napoleon at Waterloo and Lee at Gettysburg had also come to believe their men could do anything, even charge up a hill into the teeth of cannon. Defeat served up on a cold plate was what those great generals had received, and now Josh feared these islands called Tarawa, and especially this atoll called Betio, were the next cold serving of error, this time for General Holland M. “Howling Mad” Smith and his cocky leathernecks. They were about to launch themselves onto a hot, sandy beach where a determined enemy waited, no matter how many flat, skipping rounds were thrown at him courtesy of the United States blue-water, pleated-pants, brown-shoe Navy.
“Jap’s figured out he’s not going to win this war, but he thinks if he bloodies us enough, we’ll sue for peace,” Josh said, thinking aloud.
“That will never happen,” Burr swore.
“I agree, but them folks on that island, they don’t know that. And they ain’t just your normal Japanese soldiers. Those are Imperial marines. They call themselves rikusentai and are tough as they come.”
Burr screwed up his ugly face. “Marines, did you say? There ain’t a Jap boy born yet who deserves the title marine. We’ll brush them aside and be across that spit of sand in an hour.”
Josh looked away, then shook his head. “If you say so, Montague,” he replied wearily.
Burr registered surprise at Josh’s sudden surrender and eyed him for a long second. “How long’s it been? Us knowing one another?”
Josh smiled, though it was a sad smile. “Since the Bering Sea. You headed up a marine detachment that came aboard the old Comanche, and I was at the time the lowest ensign on the duty roster. I was told to look after you.” Josh recalled Burr as a young man, climbing eagerly up the gangway to board the cutter in Ketchikan. Burr had been filled with piss and vinegar, like a boy playing war in his brown khakis, leggings, and flat tin helmet. He’d had a big forty-five-caliber pistol strapped to his waist. It occurred to Josh that it was probably the same one Burr had in the holster on his belt, though the belt wrapped around a waist that was considerably thicker than during the old days in Alaska.
“I didn’t like you the first time I laid eyes on you, Thurlow, and nothing has changed my mind since,” Burr announced.
Josh put out his hand. “Maybe so, but isn’t it about time you and me made a peace?”
“You can just go ahead and put your mitt away, because I’ll never shake it. Don’t look at me that way. You know why. You married the woman I loved and then you got her killed. Do you think I could ever forgive you for either of those things?”
Josh lowered his hand. “I loved Naanni, too.”
Burr’s reply was a sneer. “Sure you did.”
If you only knew how much, Josh thought, remembering Naanni’s face when she’d looked up at him from their marriage bed. Though he tried not to, he also saw her face when it was cold and bloody and as empty of life as the frozen tundra in midwinter.
“You loved her just as much as you love your present girlfriend, I’m sure,” Burr sniped, then laughed harshly. “The coconut telegraph has been alive with the news that you impregnated the black wife of that cannibal coast-watcher on New Georgia! I wonder what Miss Theodosia Crossan, Killakeet Island, North Carolina, is going to think about that? Isn’t that her name and address? Why, I suppose anybody could write her a letter, tell her all about what her boyfriend’s been doing out here while she sits home pining away.”
The naval artillery stopped, and Josh looked t
oward the battered atoll, the dust settling around it. It was shining bright yellow in the sun. “That ‘anybody’ won’t be you, will it, Montague?”
“Don’t worry, Thurlow. I won’t do it, though God knows somebody should.”
Now came a sudden heavy thumping and the muffled shouts of men behind plated steel. “You boys keep it quiet in there!” a thin voice shrilled, and Josh turned to see a tall, skinny ensign and two sailors pushing against a watertight door. The ensign looked frightened.
Josh could never stand to see a thing caged, neither a raccoon in a road-side zoo nor even a bunch of marines on a troopship. “Let them boys out,” he demanded, advancing on the ensign, who looked at Josh with wide eyes.
“Those men are kept inside for a reason,” Burr called over his shoulder from the rail.
“That might be,” Josh muttered, “but it ain’t a good one.” He thrust him-self between the sailors and pulled open the door. “You fellas get on out here, get some fresh air.”
He didn’t have to say it twice. A flood of marines, dressed in their smart new camouflage utilities and canvas field packs, fell outside, their sweaty faces raised to the blue sky and breathing deep the first fresh air they’d had in hours. They headed for the rail to bask in the cooling breeze and take in the thoroughly pummeled, smoke-shrouded atoll that lay before them. The naval guns boomed again with great claps of thunder, and the shrieks of their rounds flying over, followed by the hollow thumps of explosions on the is-land, caused the marines to cheer.
“Thanks, Captain Thurlow!” a gunny sarge named Pinkerton called out, then clapped his mouth shut when he saw the scarlet visage of Monkey Burr, who looked ready to chew nails. Burr said nothing, though, and waded through the marines and stomped up the ladder to the bridge.
A young marine slipped up beside Josh. “What’s going to happen today, sir?” he asked. Josh looked at the boy, fuzzy cheeked and wide-eyed beneath his helmet. Two months ago, maybe less, this boy had been in a boot camp in San Diego or Parris Island. Before that, he’d been at his mother’s knee.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Randy Hewatt from Atlanta, Georgia, sir.” “Drink your water, Randy,” Josh said.
“Sir?”
“Before you go over this rail, fill up with water. Don’t wait until you get thirsty. It’s going to be a hot day, and a long one.”
The youth puzzled over Josh’s advice for a short second, then said, “They say you killed a hundred Japs in one night on the Canal. Pretty damn good for Coast Guard, sir. I hope to get a hundred myself today.”
It hadn’t been a hundred—twenty, maybe—but, yes, Josh had cut throats that night on Wilton’s Ridge. The next morning, he’d pulled off his boots and poured a sticky black liquid from them into the mud. It stank like rotten blood, which it was. “Oh, the glory of it all,” he muttered.
“What was it like, sir? On Guadalcanal?”
“Easier than it’ll be on this sandy spit,” Josh said beneath his breath, too low for the boy to hear. “Drink your water, I said!” he snapped and lurched off to another position on the rail where he wouldn’t have to look at the dead boy who wasn’t dead yet but was headed in that direction, sure as the tide would fall and the reef before them would rise. He imagined the boy’s mother standing at her door holding a yellow telegram from the Navy Department. The boy’s father was rising from his easy chair, a newspaper in his hand, a quizzical look on his face … Josh shook the vision out of his head and tried to think of something else, anything else.
The clock ticked on. Two battalions of the Second Marines had been in their amtracs and the slab-sided, ramp-dropping Higgins boats for five hours, riding around in circles. Josh suspected the men inside were probably desperate to get off what had turned into a boxy inferno of vomit, urine, gun oil, diesel fumes, and sweat. He had seen that even off Guadal-canal, where the landings were mostly unopposed.
Now Josh was surprised to see a line of amtracs and Higgins boats making their way toward the J. Wesley Clayton, which had been named after one of President Roosevelt’s financial advisors. The company of infantry aboard her had been designated as part of the reserve. Apparently, someone in the command structure had decided to go ahead and send it in on the first wave. To Josh, this represented the first sign of nervousness from General Smith and his staff. “You’re starting to figure it out, aren’t you?” he whispered, then shook his head. “Too late. Too late.”
There was no planned second wave. The Sixth Marine Regiment was in the troopships, but no one thought it would be necessary to send them in. No one. Every time there was a briefing, the briefing officer always ended with that note. The Sixth Marines were there just in case, but no one thought they were necessary. From his voracious reading of history, Josh knew the capricious gods of battle especially loved to spoil the certainty of staff officers.
Then, abruptly, the thunderous naval bombardment once again stopped. On the atoll, the breeze tumbled away the yellow smoke, and beneath the tropical sun, the spit of sand began to glow like a sliver of gold lying atop a vast blue tabletop. It was pretty, Josh thought, postcard pretty. All that was needed was hula girls, their hands making erotic movements of welcome. Come you, marines. Come you, and make love to us.
Josh’s mind flew aloft and looked down at what lay before the invasion fleet. Two miles long, Betio was flat, nothing higher than thirty feet on the entire island. It was shaped like an eel with its head facing west and its limp tail hanging east. The widest part was where the crucial airfield was located, seven hundred yards from beach to beach. Most of the island was barely the width of a football field. The American fleet was aimed at the northern coast of Betio, where there was a protected lagoon behind a long reef. It was easy to see why the planners of the assault figured it would take only a morning’s work to seize it.
But Josh had seen General Smith’s detailed topographic map of Betio. It showed what was known from numerous aerial photography missions. The Japanese clearly had been working tirelessly for months to prepare for an invasion. Dozens of big coastal artillery pieces, embedded in concrete bunkers, were in place, and the Japanese were famous for being competent artillery-men capable of accurate, rapid fire. There were also long sand embankments stretching across the island. There had been an argument about what those embankments were for. Most of the staff officers felt they were lines of defense. Only a few had divined their true purpose, the absorption or deflection of the preinvasion artillery rounds.
The map also showed a vast array of steel bar obstacles on and near the beach, designed to snag landing craft. And just back from the beach was an assortment of palm log bunkers, probably used as machine-gun nests. Josh had no doubt that snipers were also dispersed across the atoll behind every sand dune and in the tops of palm trees. Betio was, in effect, a hornet’s nest. But the best defense for the Japanese this day, Josh believed, was not any-thing they had built. It had been provided by the gods of war.
The reef.
Josh’s mind flew down Betio’s reef. It completely surrounded the atoll, except for the eastern tip of the eel’s tail, which led to the shallows between it and the next atoll up, named Bairiki. Josh knew reefs, even loved them. They were the protective home of vast numbers of fish, lobsters, crabs, and other sea life. They were alive themselves, the calcic outer shell of millions upon millions of tiny creatures that came out at night to feed on plankton. When the creatures died, their progeny kept building one on top of the other. The result was a dense wall of layered brain and lettuce corals, jutting pillar corals, sharp staghorn and elkhorn corals, all laid down in a rainbow of colors, all gloriously beautiful and, put together, a formidable barrier.
The plan to assault Betio was to grind over its reef in amtracs, which were small boats with tractor treads. But what of the larger Higgins boats following behind? They were nothing but tricked-up plywood barges. When they plowed into the reef.… Josh pressed his mouth into a tight line of worry. Between the reef and the atoll was a
wide, shallow lagoon. A killing ground.
Josh felt vibration in the soles of his brown shoes. The engines of the J. Wesley Clayton were rumbling awake. The old freighter was making headway. He saw the other transports were shifting, too. Sergeant Pinkerton appeared at his side. “Why are we moving?” the sergeant wondered.
“To get back into position. The current’s been pushing us away from the beaches all morning,” Josh answered.
“Situation normal, all fucked up,” Pinkerton concluded wearily.
The transports slogged up-current, the amtracs and Higgins boats chasing them, and the clock kept ticking. Josh looked at his watch and was shocked to see how late it was. The morning was nearly gone and not a single marine had started toward the atoll. “Jap will be coming out of his hole to take a breath and maybe a smoke,” he said, thinking aloud. “If our battlewagons let loose again, they might catch him in the open.”
“Then they’ll do it,” Pinkerton said.
But they didn’t. The battleships Maryland, Tennessee, and Colorado, the heavy and light cruisers, and all the other naval artillery platforms remained silent as gray ghosts. Then, therel! A big splash in front of the old Maryland indicated the Japanese shore batteries were not only still alive but capable of challenging the American fleet. Soon, a dozen splashes around the big ships indicated more guns opening up from shore.