by Homer Hickam
Sampson stopped and turned up his boot for Ready to examine what proved to be a small hole in the tread. “Looks like you stepped on a nail,” Ready said.
“It hurts like hell,” Sampson said, limping on. “Hey, gunny! I need to see a corpsman!”
“You’re walking beside one,” the gunny replied tiredly.
“Well, I need to see one that ain’t walking, one that could sit down with me and take a look at my foot. I need to go back.”
“Well, you ain’t going back.” The gunny stopped and arced his finger across his detail. “And if I hear another sorry word out of one of you jokers, I’m going to put a sorry bullet into your sorry skull just like these Japs. Savvy?”
Nobody claimed he savvied, seeing as how that would have required a sorry word, which might earn a sorry bullet, so the gunny spat out his tobacco, tucked in a fresh chaw, and took on as friendly an expression as his grizzled mug could manage. “Listen to me, boys. We got a simple job. All we got to do is to walk to the end of this island, which ain’t all that far. If we run across any live Japs, we kill them. If we don’t, and it don’t look much like we’re going to, we turn around and walk back. I know you’re worn out. I am, too. It’s too damn hot and I’ve forgotten what fresh water tastes like. Them’s the facts. But let’s just make it easy on ourselves and get this thing done and then we’ll all get on back to the beach and off to the islands of nooky-nooky What do you say?”
Ready thought the gunny had presented a sound argument, but it didn’t much matter what Ready thought, because just as the gunny had finished his little speech, a Japanese bullet zipped through his back, punching right through his heart and out his chest in a cloud of dust and blood, whereupon the gunny fell dead without so much as a whimper. All the marines, and Ready, too, threw themselves face-first into the sand. Some pent-up cursing erupted, but then they all settled down and waited for the next thing to happen.
Since he was the medic, or as near to one as they had, Ready crawled up beside the gunny and looked for signs of life. Seeing none, he pondered the dead little sergeant, whose dirty face wore an expression of resignation. Ready rolled over on his back and thought of the nun and wondered what she was doing, if she was all right. She was sure pretty, Gunny, he said silently. I bet you’d have liked her, too, if you hadn’t been trying so hard to do your duty.
Ready’s unspoken conversation was interrupted by Tucker, who pulled his face out of the sand and asked, “Anybody see the Jap what shot Gunny?”
“Yeah, I seen him,” Sampson answered, spitting sand. “He’s behind that palm tree, that one, see where I’m pointing? Yeah, the one chopped halfway down. Look, you can see his rifle sticking out from behind it, the dumb moron.”
Ready peered at the broken palm. Sure enough, he could see what appeared to be a rifle protruding from it. The marines shot at the tree; one of them managed to hit the rifle with a lucky shot, and it went flying. The Japanese soldier could be seen crawling after it, and then he was shot, too. Then everything got quiet and the marines plus Ready just lay in the sand for a while.
“Well, who’s got the rank?” Sampson finally asked when Garcia started snoring. “Anybody got any stripes in this lash-up?”
“He probably does,” Tucker said, nodding toward Ready. “The corpsman.”
“I ain’t no corpsman,” Ready said. “I’m a Coast Guard bosun.”
“Well, even if that’s true, you still got the stripes,” Tucker said. “So I guess that puts you in charge. What do we do, Bosun? Go back to the beach?”
That suggestion got an immediate chorus of agreement from all the marines, including Garcia, who woke up long enough to cast his vote. Bolstered by their enthusiasm, not to mention the awful heat and his thirst, Ready came close to ordering them all to jump up and run back to the air-field, quick as they could. There, they could all split up, find their outfits, pretend they’d never seen or heard of the gunny, and then loll around until it was time for the marines to load up for Hawaii. Ready could also find Josh Thurlow and, with luck, maybe even the pretty little Irish nun. It was perfect, just what they ought to do. Then Ready’s awful sense of duty took over. He sighed and said, “Let’s finish this detail.”
“Well, shit,” Tucker muttered, and every man said his own favorite curse word and spat sand. But then, because they were marines and knew a legitimate order when they heard it, even if it was from a Coast Guard bosun, they stood up, spread out, and walked forward, all the while straining their eyes for a live Japanese.
“Does anybody have a radio?” Ready asked after a few minutes. Sampson answered. “I had one, but it got heavy, so I pitched it. It didn’t work too good, anyway.”
They kept trudging until at last they came to a beach before a glittering blue inlet, across which they could see another island that appeared as flat and ugly as Betio. “Look, Bosun,” Garcia said, pointing to the island. “There’s guys over there.”
Ready looked and his heart sank. They weren’t just guys. They were Japanese rikusentai, alive and well, who looked like they still had some fight in them. They waved a flag with the rising sun on it, pumped their rifles up and down, and yelled curses across the shallow water. Ready struggled once more with his sense of duty, then said, “I need a runner.”
Private Harland spoke up and said he could run fast as the wind. Ready told him, “Go find an officer, Harland. Tell him we’ve reached the end of the island and it’s all clear. Also tell him we found some live Japanese on the next island up. Looks like a bunch of them. We’re going across to keep them running.”
“The hell we are, Bosun!” Tucker erupted. “We done what we were supposed to do, just like the gunny said. He didn’t say nothing about going on to no other island!”
Ready nodded agreement but said, “Those fellows over there are as worn out as we are, I reckon. But give them time to rest, they’ll dig in and shoot up the marines who’ll be ordered to go at them later today or tomorrow. We’ve got to keep them on the run.”
“What if they don’t run?” Tucker demanded.
Ready shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they’ll crawl in their holes and shoot themselves.”
“Am I still supposed to go, Bosun?” Harland asked hopefully.
“Yes,” Ready answered. “Tell the first officer you find it would be best if he got some folks up here, toot sweet.”
Harland took off, leaving Ready in charge of only Tucker, Sampson, and Garcia. It was like old times.
“Now we got only us four against a whole damn army of Japs,” Tucker complained.
Ready didn’t reply since Tucker was correct, and he led the way into the shallows between the islands with as much hope as determination. He still had no weapon, no helmet, not even a shirt, only the corpsman’s bag slung across his naked shoulder. After a spate of grumbling, the trio of marines followed him, their rifles held chest high. The Japanese troops watched them for a while, waved their flag again, then took off. Relieved they hadn’t been shot at, Ready and the marines walked up on the beach, fanned out and found a few dead Japanese, suicides all, then threw themselves down when machine-gun fire whipped past them. “Knock that thing out!” Ready said, and the three marines crawled forward and tossed grenades on top of it until it disappeared in a rain of flame and smoke.
Disappointingly, another well-hidden machine gun opened up and then another. Ready reflected on his lack of training when it came to leading infantry. He realized they had walked into an ambush and were stuck. “Dig in,” he said because it was all he knew to say.
“Well, ain’t this pleasant?” Tucker muttered, lifting his entrenching tool off his back. “Bosun, this is surely a fine mess you’ve got us into.”
Garcia defended Ready. “Hell, at least he didn’t get us stuck on no coral reef. Takes a general and a couple of admirals to pull off that kind of fucked-up operation.”
“You’re right, Tucker. I messed up,” Ready said. “You want to take over?
“Hell no!” Tucker yelp
ed, astonished to hear an officer, even a noncommissioned officer in the Coast Guard, admit that he was wrong about anything. It was a first in his short military career. “I ain’t a leader, just a rifleman. Lead on, Bosun, lead on!”
“OK,” Ready said. “Then you boys dig in, like I said.”
The marines dug in, like Ready said. Tucker even dug a shallow depression for Ready. For two hours, they waited for something else to happen. The machine guns stayed silent. Then Tucker looked over his shoulder toward Betio. “Hey, here comes John Wayne!” he yelled, and Ready looked to see a marine tank coming across the inlet and a dozen or so marines coming along behind it.
“We’re gonna make it after all!” Sampson yelled, waving his helmet. But then the Japanese machine guns opened up, the tank stalled, and its crew abandoned it and retreated through the water back to Betio along with the riflemen. “Well, that weren’t pretty,” Sampson observed, plopping his helmet back aboard.
“Guess we’re still the only Americans on this island,” Tucker said. “Whimper Fi, y’all.”
Ready peered at the blistering sun which wasn’t quite so blistering now that it was drooping toward the horizon. “We’d better dig in a little deeper,” he said.
Without argument this time, the marine trio hauled out their entrenching tools again and dug deeper. “Anybody got a spare K-bar?” Ready asked, and Garcia silently passed him one. “How about a pistol?” Garcia silently passed him a forty-five with two magazines and, before he could ask, three grenades.
“Somebody want to tell me why we’re here?” Sampson griped.
“Semper Fidelis,” Ready answered, which made all three of the marines laugh.
“Hey, Bosun,” Sampson called, “what’s the Coast Guard motto?”
“Semper Paratus,” Ready proudly answered. “It means always prepared.” Sampson gave that some thought, then made a prediction. “Well, Mr. Coast Guard, get prepared for Mr. Jap to kick the everlasting crap out of us tonight.”
16
Sister Mary Kathleen and her fella boys and their laden stretchers finally reached the beach, and there she focused her mind to the task at hand. She instructed the bearers to place the wounded men near a makeshift landing where boxy, slab-sided boats were putting in and out. Obediently, the fella boys lowered the stretchers and then sat down beside them, their expressions neutral and their minds apparently the same. She so admired their ability to not think when thinking was not required. Thinking was her curse, as it was for so many Europeans who came to the Pacific isles, for thinking led to a desire to change the way people were used to doing things in this world of vast blue seas, small green islands, and tropical rainbow abundance, a world that had over eons shaped a completely different approach to life, one that was at once leisurely and barbaric.
She looked around, hoping to find someone to help her with the wounded and also assist her in finding a big man. Before long, she took note of a short marine officer stomping up and down the beach, bellowing at everyone within the sound of his voice, which meant most of the atoll, and demanding that everything be done toot sweet! Before she could approach him, he abruptly marched up and stared at her. “Who and what the blue blazes are you?” he demanded and then, noting the cargo in the stretchers, put his hands on his hips and threw back his head in a frightful howl. “Look what you brung me! Josh Thurlow, brought low! Haw! Now ain’t this rich! You boys! Get over here! Take a look at this!”
Two bare-chested marines came running and gawked at the men on the stretchers. “Take this wretched fool, the big naked one, and put him inside that pillbox,” the officer demanded, pointing toward the ruin of a concrete Japanese gun emplacement. “See if you can find some barbed wire. That’s our new brig, and this is our first prisoner.”
The marines approached the stretchers, but the fella boys jumped to their feet and barred their way. The marines tiredly pulled their K-bars.
“Back off, you brown savages,” one of them growled.
The stout little officer continued to gloat. “I have you now, Josh. Yes, indeedy, I do!”
Sister Mary Kathleen interrupted the man’s strange glee. “Beggin’ yer pardon, sor, I was told by a Bosun O’Neal to see both these men out to a hospital ship, especially this big fellow. He’s frightful wounded, and he has fever, too. You men there. Put down yer knives. Me boys are just doing me bidding, don’t ye see?”
“What should we do, Colonel?” one of the marines asked, swiping his blade near the stomach of one of the fella boys, who did not so much as flinch. In fact, he crossed his big arms as if challenging the marine to do his worst.
The little colonel looked the situation over, then said, “Oh, leave them savages alone, but go find that barbed wire and prepare the pillbox for our prisoner.” He studied the nun with his awful, simian face. “You’re Irish,” he said, and it sounded as much accusation as observation.
“Indeed, I am, sor,” she answered. “I am Sister Mary Kathleen, born in Ballysaggart of the county Tyrone, and a member of the Order of the Sacred Blood.”
The officer raised his bushy eyebrows. “Well, I am Colonel Montague Singleton Burr, born in Hays of the state of Kansas, and a member of the order of the United States Marine Corps, which has expended its share of sacred blood. I am, I might add, in charge of this beach. As to Josh Thurlow, I’ve seen worse wounds, and fever’s common enough out here. I’ve got a touch of it myself, even as we speak.” He wiped his brow with the palm of his hand, then wiggled his fingers to show the drops of sweat that adhered to them. “You see? Some folks out here consider fever their best friend. Knocks you out, lets you sleep and dream of ice cream or women or De-Soto automobiles or whatever is your fancy. I can hardly wait until it puts me down. Now, that marine without his arm, he can go out to the navy docs, but Josh Thurlow ain’t going nowhere but my new brig. I need to keep an eye on him because he’s a killer, you savvy?”
Sister Mary Kathleen thought the colonel was so much like the men she’d once known in Ballysaggart, untalented men who had little but their pride, which they used like a club. For such men, a friendly and agreeable response was always best. “I do understand, sor,” she answered. “Sure, he has killed many a man on this atoll, but then, wasn’t that why he was sent here?”
Burr smirked. “That may be so, little sister, but lately Thurlow has become something of a nuisance. Say, what are you doing here? I had no intelligence there were missionaries on this atoll.”
She drew herself up before forcing herself to subside, even allowing her shoulders to slump in deference. “Faith, sor, I am not a missionary, for they are grand, adventurous people in service to our Lord. My order’s purpose is not to convert but to care. In the Forridges on the isle of Ruka, we operated a small clinic and also taught the children to read and write.”
Burr was distracted by a young officer, heard his report with a sour expression, then sent him running, propelled by a following stream of foul-mouthed invectives. “Toot sweet, you hear? Toot sweet! God damn these shavetails, Sister. They’re as worthless as teats on a boar hog.”
“Aye, sor,” she replied brazenly. “Or as an English landlord, I’d wager.” Internally, she berated herself for the snappy answer.
Burr squinted speculatively at her, chewed his cud of tobacco, spat, then grinned and said, “Or the nooky on a nun, eh?”
She looked the odd little marine officer in the eye to let him know she was not offended, as surely he’d meant for her to be. She’d heard far worse as a young girl whilst serving the men their malts and various liquors in the town’s only pub. The colonel was testing her, just as they had. “As you say, sor,” she answered, her eyes lowered.
Burr asked, “Where did you say you were from?”
Quietly, she admonished herself. “The Forridges, sor. Some call them the Far Reaches.”
“Never heard of the place. A group of islands, I presume?”
Sister Mary Kathleen nodded, keeping her eyes downcast. “Yes, sor, that is correct, named for
the Englishman Ansel Forridge by Captain Cook his-self. I think the captain owed him money or some such.” She raised her eyes to see the colonel still grinning at her. “Anyways, three hundred or so miles nor-nor’east of here they are, sor. ‘Tis the merchant sailors and yachtsmen who call them the Far Reaches. They’re great green hills that push out of the bluest sea God in His mercy ever made, not like these nubs, these skinny flat atolls of Tarawa.”
A trickle of tobacco juice escaped from the corner of Burr’s mouth. He delicately wiped it away with a finger and said, “Thank you for the travelogue, Sister. So how was it you came to be here?”
“My fella boys and I sailed in outriggers. We heard the Americans were here. It was a bit of a surprise to find only Japanese.”
“It’s a relief to hear even the Catholic Church sometimes has lousy intelligence. I presume, therefore, you were made a prisoner by the Japanese?”
“Indeed, sor. For two days before ye landed.”
“Did they abuse you, Sister?”
“Nay, sor. They were too busy getting ready to fight to bother much with me and me fella boys a’tall. They put us up in a big sand fort but scarcely said a word otherwise, except for a kind lieutenant who saw to our needs.”
“I would have thought they would have at least raped you,” Burr said, sounding disappointed. “What made you sail all this way? To find Americans, is that what you said? What for?”
She tried to speak with detachment, but her enthusiasm for the subject defeated her. “One of our islands—its name is Ruka—was taken over by the Japanese in February of ‘42. The commander is a man by the name of Colonel Yoshu. I came here to tell ye that if ye will send an armed force there, I think he will surrender.”
Burr snickered. “I’ll see if the Second Marines is available for the required negotiations.” He shook his head. “Sister, what you’re saying is nonsensical. The Japanese don’t surrender.”