by Robb White
So that became a sort of grisly game—listening to the occasional reports which came in to the marines through the loudspeaker on the bulkhead. Somebody would give an order: "Test atmosphere." Then the marines would wait, all of them staring at the loudspeaker, until the loudspeaker would answer. "Atmosphere reads carbon dioxide one point eight ..." or nine or, once, two per cent.
By sundown the air would become so foul that, to Adam, the Hght bulbs seemed to be burning inside a gray, thick fog. Some of the marines would pass out on the deck and there was nothing you could do for them—they only needed air, and there wasn't any more. Their faces, Adam noticed, gradually turned from a pink flesh color to a dull, light gray and, by nightfall, blue. No one smoked because there wasn't enough oxygen to keep a flame burning.
Adam had never realized before how blessed air could be. Just the opening of a small round steel door became, to the marines, the greatest event in their Hves. It was something they looked forward
THE DEEP, DARK SEA S7
to hour after hour, something they prayed would happen—and happen soon. As the days went on, the miserable and endless days, three words got to be more important to them than any they had ever waited for. Adam became convinced that every marine in the boat would rather hear those three words than, say, "Here's a million dollars."
They waited all day to hear them—and some, overcome by the lack of oxygen, never did hear them—and tibe last hour of waiting always felt as though it could not be endured but at last a voice would say, "Open the hatch."
Then the air would pour down on them. Sweet, cool, fresh air—all you wanted of it. Tasting and smelling of the open ocean. Good, clean, fine air. At the order to open up, the marines—those who could move—would crowd in under the hatch, their faces upraised and waiting for the first inrush of the air. It made no difference to them if it was pouring rain or if the sea was rough and salt water spattered down on them, they kept their faces up to gulp in the fine air.
But each day, until the air gave out, Jason spent the hours trying to make a combat marine of Adam.
"Remember, Lieutenant," Jason began, *'your feet are the most important part of you. Keep 'em clean, and keep clean socks on 'em and see that your shoes fit. A lot of guys get killed because their feet get so sore and rotten they can't run fast enough."
"I'll do that," Adam said. It was a night, the pumps were circulating the good air through the
boat and he and Jason, had, for a change, a little room. Most of the marines were up on the after platform of the sub, crowded together in the small place, but at least able to look up at the stars and the moon and clouds, and look around without seeing a steel wall. "Listen, Jason," Adam said, "how about knocking off the lieutenant' stuff. That's for parades, and I don't think we're going to be parading much. My first name's Adam. WHiat's yours?"
"I'd rather just be called Jason," Jason said. "My first name's Harold."
"I don't much blame you.**
"You know, I was telling you about the first-aid kit," Jason said, and Adam wondered why his voice suddenly sounded a little timid, shy. "Remember, if somebody gets hit, don't use your own kit on him. Use his. That way, when you get hit your buddy will have yours to use on you. That's important." He stopped for a moment and then said, quietly, "That is if you have a buddy."
"That guy—what was his name, Rivers?—meant a lot to you, didn't he?" Adam asked.
"Brooks was his name," Jason said and then looked over at the torpedo tube. "Well, he was my buddy. You've got to have a buddy. They taught us that in boot camp, and they were right. Without a buddy you're nothing. You're all by yourself. It's like this," Jason said, turning back to Adam, "one man can only do what one man can do, but—and I don't know why it is—two men can do as much as
four or five. I don t know why that is. You just get a lot more fighting done with a buddy."
Adam had no intention of doing any fighting at all. He hadn't joined up to do this personal kind of fighting, this hand-to-hand stufi Jason had been trying to teach him. It wasn't that Adam was afraid of getting killed or anything like that. Your chances of living in a plane were no better than those of a man on the groimd. But in a plane it was an impersonal thing—it was the plane. That did the fighting, you just drove it. Adam really couldn't imagine what it was like to fight on the ground, one man against another.
*What was it like on Guadalcanal?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't know," Jason said. *1 guess I had the wrong idea. You know, going to the movies and all. It wasn't much Hke that. You know these guys in the movies get hit and this pretty girl comes out of nowhere and takes care of him and aU that." Jason began to laugh. *'And they're so clean—in the movies. Oh, maybe they've got a couple smudges of mud way up on their cheekbones or something. On Guadal you weren't ever clean. I mean, your clothes were rotting oflF you and you were rotting inside them. We were dirty. I don't know, it seems like they always arrange it so you're about as uncomfortable as you can get. Like this." He waved his hand around at the steel walls.
Adam remembered the beak-nosed marine talking to him one night on the after platform. "That Jason is a real marine," Guns had told him. "He's one
marine who ought to have all the medals they've got. And just a kid."
"What'd he do?" Adam had asked.
*^^othing," Guns had said. "He didn't go running around killing off thousands of people and being a nuisance. He was just always where he was supposed to be, and you could count on him to stay there. No matter how bad it got, Jason would stay there. Nothing could shake him. I remember once they came pouring down on him—I tell you it looked Hke a million of 'em. I would've run a country mile. But Jason stayed." Guns stopped and thought a minute. "The way he's smart is hke that time. He figured that even these guys weren't attacking marines for the glory of the Emperor, or whatever. Somebody was telling 'em to, just like somebody was always telling us; somebody was leading 'em. So he sat there in a mudhole and picked off the ones he thought were the boss. He must've been right because, after a while, they stopped coming and went on back where they'd come from. He's a good man in a fire fight," Guns decided. "A real marine."
THREE THINGS wcrc Constantly in the minds of the marines as the long voyage went on: the air, the submarine, and finally the destination. As they got used to the terrible air of the days and the sweet air of the nights, and learned to endure the unendurable crowding and inconvenience (not one of them had had any sort of bath for four days
unless the sweat that poxired from them in the 100-degree heat could be called a bath), the destination began to emerge as the most important of the three things.
Each marine had his own idea of where they were going and what they were going to do when they got there. (One of them insisted that they were going back to the States, although the compass course which, unless they went around the world, would never bring this submarine to the States.)
"I figure it this way," Jason told Adam. "It's going to be a jungle someplace.*'
"What do we need with a jungle?"
"Well, it could come in handy," Jason said vaguely, not sure what we needed with one. "But it's going to be a jungle because we're the only marines who ever fought 'em in a jungle. They've got lots of parade-ground marines and recruiting marines in their striped pants, but we're all—except you, that is—First Regiment, First Division Marines. We're the first to have a stand-up fight with 'em. And we Hcked 'em. They're supposed to be red-hot in this jungle fighting, and I guess they are. Anyway, we licked 'em at the Tenaru. You know how to get their snipers out of the pakn trees?"
"Remember, Jason, I'm no warrior."
"You wiU be. Anyway, you get a hght tank and butt it against the trunks of the trees. The snipers fall out Hke coconuts and away we go. So, anyway I figure we're going to some jungle."
"We're going to Australia. We're going to do sentry duty on those kangaroos."
"W^eVe going back to the Philippines," the tech sergeant said. "MacArthur left his hat. So
we're going to go back and get it."
"I think this is some kind of endurance test," one of them decided. "They put us on Guadalcanal and that couldn't kill us, so somebody in Washington got to wondering what could kill us, and so they decided to see if we could wear out. We're just going to ride around and around inside this iron cigar until we wear out."
The staflF sergeant spoke with authority. "It's a mission. It's a combat mission or they wouldn't have picked us. And, wherever we're going, it's going to be hot or we wouldn't be wearing these thin fatigues."
"Are we all there are?" one of them asked plaintively. "Just twenty of us—not counting you. Lieutenant? Maybe the whole regiment, maybe the division is coming along. Maybe all the Navy's subs have got marines in 'em."
"I don't think so," the sergeant said. "They picked us out, two by two, from aU over the division. Special Weapons men, R-2 people, gunnery sergeants, Com-Section men, v^dth fire teams and BAR men. That doesn't look Hke a big action to me. If they'd wanted a big action, they'd have said, TaU in, March Off!'"
"I don't think we're going to fight," another declared. "They're going to dump us on some barren rock as an occupation force and let us sit there with the gooney birds."
"I don't want to confuse everybody," Adam put
in, *l3ut it looks to me like I foul up everybody's theory. If we're an assault team—why me? I never assaulted anything. If we're going to occupy an island—why me? They paid about fifty thousand dollars to teach me to be a pilot Why throw aU that—and me—away?^
The tech sergeant looked at him for a moment and asked, sarcastically, "What can you do, Lieutenant?"
*1 drive plane pretty good," Adam said, not boasting.
All the marines looked at him then, and it gave Adam a funny feehng. They didn't look at him with scorn or even with superiority. They looked at him as you would a Christmas present from your httle old aunt, a prettily wrapped gismo that was perfectly useless to you. Adam felt strongly that he was out of place here. Even, perhaps, unwanted,
"The reason they didn't tell us where we're going," Gims said, "is because we don't want to know.
*TVo you don't. Rebel," he went on. "If they take you prisoner and start working you over, the less you know the better your chances of coming out of it. If they think you know something and won't tell 'em—then . . . well, you're in for a real going-over, and they know how to go over you too."
Jason said it for all of them. "I don't much care where we go, just get me out of here. Td rather be nailed down on some stinking beach than hve in this coffin."
On the fourth night, soon after the hatches were
opened and the air poured in, word came over the speaker for all marines to report to the forward torpedo room.
Adam and Jason, with four or five others, were taking their turn on the after part of the open bridge and hated to leave before their hour of the night sky, the rushing white sea, and the stars and the air was over, but, as one of them said, "This must be it."
In the torpedo room the colonel and the major were waiting as Adam and the rest shoved their way into the already packed room.
As the marines settled down, Jason whispered to Adam, "That's the colonel who led the Scouts on Guadalcanal, Real rugged."
"They had Boy Scouts on Guadalcanal?" Adam asked in a loud whisper.
Jason looked at him with scorn. *Teh. Boy Scouts. About nine feet tall." "With merit badges?"
"With merit badges. Like the Purple Heart and Medal of Honor. That's one you don't usually get until after you're dead." "Who needs it?" Adam said.
Across the room the colonel and the major were setting up big photographs and charts on the torpedo tubes. Looking over the heads of the others, Adam could see pictures of dark islands in an almost perfect circle. They were like a necklace with many small islands making a chain from which hung one big island, much darker than the rest. Adam decided that the colonel was neither very
polite nor very considerate. He made no apology for not telling them long ago what this trip was all about. He just started talldng, saying, "I haven't told you men where you are going or what you are going to do because it wasn't necessary for you to know. Until now." He swxmg around to the pictures. "TThis is where you're going. It's an atoll whose real name it is not important for you to know. It is held by the enemy. Only one of the islands—this one"—he pointed to the big dark pendant in the necklace—"concerns us, for that's where the enemy is. We're going ashore there."
To Adam the marines seemed only glad to hear the news. Glad, he supposed, because it meant getting out of this steel coflBn. But, he wondered, did they—or even the colonel—realize that there might be thousands of the enemy on that island? WTiat could a couple of dozen marines accomplish against odds like that?
This was a real nightmare. Somebody, somewhere, was fouling things up beyond belief.
The colonel was talking. "This is going to be a recon. We want to find out whether the enemy has built an airfield here. If so, what is it made of— crushed coral? Concrete? Wliat? How long is it? How wide? Taxi strips? Revetments? Hangars? Repair facilities? And, above all, the number and types of aircraft on the island, if any? Also, what will it take to put the strip out of commission—the size and type of bombs or shells.
"Next we've got to find out what sort of fortifications they've got, what we'll have to fight if, later,
we attack this place. Pillboxes? Where? How many? Above or below the ground? What are they made of? What's the best way to knock them out? Bombing from the air? Fire from siurface ships? Or do the Marines have to take them with rifles and flame? What's in the pillboxes? Machine guns? Big? Little? AA? Shore batteries?
"Next, we want to find out the strength of the enemy. How many? What sort of troops? Army? Marine? Navy? How experienced? What training? How armed?
"Next is terrain. What sort of place is it for fighting. Hills? Thick jungle or open jungle? Sniper positions? Concealed artillery?
"In short" the colonel said, "we're going to find out everything there is to know about the enemy on this place. Any questions?"
The Southerner looked around at his buddies for a moment, but since none of them had courage enough to ask he raised his hand. "Yes, sir, I have a question. Colonel."
Adam was surprised that there was now no trace of Rebel's southern accent. He sounded as though he came from Boston, Massachusetts.
"What is it, Stilesr
"How do we get home again?" Rebel asked.
"The major will give you the details," the colonel said. Then he stopped talking and slowly looked at the marines, one by one. When he began talking again his voice was lower, and the words came out slow and clear. "All of you were on Guadalcanal. AU of you except Lieutenant Land.
*1 told you, this is a recon. We are going to land on this island, get the information we want, and get off the island. Obviously, if the enemy sees us coming, we won't get ashore. If we get ashore and the enemy finds us, we won't get off the island. Understand?*'
Adam understood the words all right, but from the looks on the faces of the marines around him, he began to wonder if he really understood the significance. The marines seemed to be sharing some sort of secret among themselves, and he wondered what it was.
The colonel was looking at them again with that slow, steady gaze, his eyes looking into each man's eyes in turn. "The first shot you fire will kill us all," he said. "All right, Major, take over."
The men silently made a passage for the colonel and, as he approached, Adam stepped aside for him, but the colonel said, "Come with me, Lieutenant."
Adam followed him out of the torpedo room and down to the Httle cabin, where the colonel let him in and then closed the door.
"What sort of trip has it been?" the colonel asked.
**Well, lousy, sir."
The colonel smiled then and said, "I wonder if when we get through this war all we'll really remember about it is how uncomfortable it was." Now he turned again and smiled at Adam. "I'm sorry I
couldn't explain all this to you back in Pearl, Land."
"I wish I knew more about this sort of thing," Adam said.
*T)on't worry," the colonel said pleasantly, "those marines are hand-picked, they know their job. You just go along with them."
"Colonel, why am I here at all?" Adam asked.
*Those IBM machines in Washington are pretty eflBcient," the colonel said. "I needed an aviator who could judge the air strength and facilities on the island. I also needed someone who could read and speak Japanese. The machine picked you because you had lived and gone to school in Japan. You were also a naval aviator. You were also available in Pearl Harbor. And expendable."
Adam thought to himself, this is the end of the dream. Then he began to wonder what the real nightmare was going to be hke.
"That is you, isn't it?" the colonel asked. **Your father was a professor at the University in Tokyo, wasn't he? You Hved there for four years, didn't you?"
Adam looked at him. 'That's me, sir. And I guess I'm expendable."
"Just a phrase," the colonel said with a hint of apology. "Now," he went on, "to spot the enemy armament, I needed a detail for inteUigence. I want you to go at this thing as though you were going to command the air attack against this island. Find out what resistance you can expect at the beginning, and then find out what facilities you will have for your own use when the island is ours. Try, too, to get any code books you can find or anything else that may help us. I will probably go along with or near you, because their air power is
the most important thing we want to find out/'
*When do we go, Colonel?^
^Tomorrow night. We will be in the vicinity of the atoll tomorrow afternoon. We'll find out as much as we can through the periscope, and then we'll make sure the entrance to the lagoon isn't mined. At nightfall we'll go into the lagoon, submerged, then surface and we'll go ashore in the rubber boats. We'll only have eight hours, Lieutenant. We've got to be off the island before dawn.**