by Robb White
'"The sub's coming back for us?"
*lt'll wait in the lagoon, then surface before dawn and pick us up. Get a good night's sleep."
"I'll try," Adam said, grinning.
When he got back to the torpedo room the major had gone, but the pictures and the charts were still there.
Adam had expected that the marines would be yakldng up a storm about all this. It was what he wanted to do. Just to hear them talk about it, he thought, would made the thing less enormous, maybe. Make it less terrifying.
But the marines were very quiet. Most of them were fooling with their rifles—again. Taking them apart, inspecting every inch of every piece, then putting them carefully back together again. Then cleaning them—rifles so clean already that it seemed impossible to get them any cleaner.
Adam found Jason sitting on one of the bunks-cleaning his rifle—and squeezed in beside him. "Well," Adam said, hoping that Jason would talk about it.
"Yeh," Jason said, inspecting his rifle. **Well/*
**Big night tomorrow night, eh?^
"Could be," Jason admitted.
He didn't seem to want to talk at all. Adam watched him clean the rifle for a long time, and as he sat there he began to feel really scared and, more than that even, lonely. "Suppose the place is crawling with Japs?" Adam asked.
"Probably is," Jason said, swinging his rifle up so he could sight through the barrel at the overhead light. "Hmmm,'' he said and began to clean the barrel again.
After a while Adam asked, "What do you think about the whole deal, Jason?"
"Nothing," Jason said.
Jason just wasn't interested in anything.
*'What did the major say?" Adam asked.
"Same old stuff," Jason said.
"Anything I ought to know, perhaps?"
"Unh unh," Jason said, taking his ammo cUps out of their pouches and lightly oiling each round before putting them back.
Adam looked slowly around the crowded room, and it seemed to him then that each marine had, somehow walled himself off from all the others, each becoming as alone as the last man on earth.
"At least I found out why I'm here," Adam said.
Jason, he could tell, wasn't interested but at least he was poHte as he said, **Yeah? Why?"
"I speak Japanese."
Jason turned slowly and, at last, looked at him. "You speak Japanese?"
"Yeah. I lived in Japan for four or five years. My old man was a professor in the University in Tokyo."
"Yeh? And you speak it real good?"
"I ought to. It's all I spoke for four or five years. My father wanted us to, so we even spoke it to each other."
Jason carefully put his rifle down where it wouldn't get dirty and then said, "Hey, you guys I"
The marines turned to look at him.
"Get this," Jason said "Adam speaks Japanese. He speaks it good!"
The marines looked then at Adam with interest. The Rebel said, "You really speak that language?"
"I speak it better than you do dat ol' southern drawl," Adam told him. "How come when you talk to the colonel you sound like you went to Harvard or something?"
"Sssh," the Rebel said. "Ahm keepin the colonel off balance so he won't find out ah'm a general in the Confederate Army." Suddenly the Rebel cut loose with a bloodcurdling yell and then looked around at all of them. "Look out, you Yankees, you" he said. "The South shall rise again."
"Amen, brother," Guns said and turned to Adam. "You really speak it, huh? Well, let me tell you, it may save your httle ol' life, it may. I lost my whole squad one time because none of us could speak the language. This patrol came by where we were, and I guess they suspected we were around there because they kept hollering that old 'Marine, you die!' stuff. So when they really got us in a tight, I was wishing, boy, I could speak that language.
rd've said, like the meanest DI in the Corps, 'Stop making so much noise or the Marines will kill you/ But, of course, I couldn't say a word and they found us.''
"Ah know one thing for sho',** the Rebel said. "Ah'm gonna go along with Adam heah, so if we git in a little trouble Adam can say to 'em in their own language. 'Ain't nobody heah but us chickens, boss,' and they'll go away."
"All right, you guys," Guns said, "get some sleep. Douse the light, somebody."
As the bright Hghts went out and left the room lit only by the red battle Hght, Adam watched the marines bedding down. The speaking-the-language thing had brought him a Httle closer to them, but now as they tried to find some comfortable position for sleep they seemed to him to be men from Mars, or somewhere. How could they—with the map of that island lit now with a reddish glow —just go to sleep Hke this?
It was his turn for the deck, with Jason in the bunk above it and as Adam stretched out on the cool steel and arranged his helmet for a pillow he felt everything starting to become real, as though he were waking up from a dream to find that it had not, really, been a dream at all.
Adam looked at the photographs of the atoll— the pretty, palm-covered Httle islands surrounding their deep and calm lagoon, and slowly the photographs became real—the coral and sand and trees and surf were real.
But he, himself, did not yet feel real. They had
asked (asked?) him to go ashore on that island. To go ashore, practically alone, on that enemy-held island. To go ashore, and inspect the enemy's defenses, his airstrip and planes and hangars, his shops and spare parts.
Adam, lying on the deck, was appalled. This was so far beyond anything he had ever imagined that he could not now grasp it in his mind. He could not see himself doing this thing. Sometimes, while sitting on his surfboard waiting for a good set to start moving in, he had imagined himself as a dashing navy hero, his chest covered wdth medals. He would have a sHght, but attractive-type, wound somewhere. But this heroic Adam Land, of the United States Navy, had done feats of valor in the clean blue sky while flying an airplane in a very dashing manner. He had never imagined himself in a situation hke this.
It scared the daylights out of him. Really terrified him, and he suddenly wished that he could just vanish. Disappear. Then, after a while, there would be Adam Land lying on some California beach, his surfboard, skeg up, lying on the sand beside him and with nothing in the world to do but wait for the surf to begin to move.
He did not, somehow, vanish.
IN THE CONNING TOWER the marine colonel stood out of the way in the crowded httle room with its busy people. The skipper and executive officer were there, the helmsman, the soundman, the talk-
er, the chief of the boat, a quartermaster, and the first Heutenant.
In the center of the rectangular room there was a round hole in the deck, and up through this hole the oiled steel shaft of the periscope went straight up and through the ceiling. The skipper walked over to it now and said, "Up periscope."
Motors somewhere in the bowels of the ship began to hum, and the skipper stooped down and held his hands out as though warming them at a fire. The oily shaft started moving slowly up, then gathered speed, and in a moment the base of the scope appeared. Two handles, much Hke the handlebars of a motorcycle, were folded up against the scope shaft, and the skipper took them now and flipped them down so that they stuck out horizontal to the shaft. With these handles he could not only turn the scope around the horizon, he could focus it and make other adjustments.
Stooping a little, with his face against a rubber guard around the eyepiece he swung the scope slowly around. Finally he stopped turning it and stood still for a moment, his face against the rubber shield. Then he stepped away from the scope and said to the other officer, "Well done, Jonesy. Right on the money." The skipper then turned to the colonel. "Here's your island. Colonel.''
The colonel came over to the scope and looked for a long time through the eyepiece.
The submarine was on the seaward and windward side of the atoll, so the colonel could see almost nothiug of the place where, in a few hours.
he would have to land marines. A heavy and c
ontinuous surf was breaking on the coral reef between the submarine, and the island and the spray from this surf made a solid curtain of white water. Through this curtain the colonel could see nothing; and over it, all he could see was the tops of the palm trees, and from periscope height even these looked unreal and hazy.
"Aren't you in rather close?" the colonel asked, still looking through the scope.
*We're in a hundred fathoms of water," the skipper said, unworried.
"I was thinking of mines,"* the colonel said.
*1 doubt if they would put mines on the seaward side," the skipper said. "They know, as well as you do, that the only way to attack an island such as this is from the lagoon side. Mining this side would just be a waste."
"That's the logical way to look at it," the colonel agreed, stepping back from the scope, "but Marine Corps doctrine holds that if the only way to attack an enemy position is at Point A—in this case the lagoon side—then attack him at any other point."
"Have you ever seen the surf breaking against these islands. Colonel?" the skipper asked and then ordered, "Down scope."
"No, I haven't," the colonel admitted.
"Unbelievable," the skipper said. "The waves breaking here now have been coming for a thousand, two thousand miles. Nothing in the deep sea has hindered them, so you don't think of the pressure in them. But when they hit one of these
little atolls . . . well, it's noisy. They are just tremendous waves. Nothing could live through them." He turned to the colonel. "So I doubt if they would mine this area. On the other hand, they may have mined the lagoon entrance."
"What can you do about that?" the colonel asked.
"Their mine fields aren't very effective. At least, so far in the war. Too few and too shallow. We usually just dive under 'em."
"How far are we from the lagoon entrance?'* the colonel asked.
The skipper glanced at his chart. "We're exactly on schedule, Colonel. Thirty-five miles from the lagoon entrance. We'll go into the lagoon at eighteen hundred, just after sunset."
The colonel looked at the clock on the wall. "It's going to be a long seven hours," he said.
"The next eight are going to be longer, aren't they?" the skipper asked.
"Waiting is worse than fighting," the colonel said, and added, "Pass the word for B squad to meet me in the wardroom."
IN THE FORWABD TORPEDO ROOM the marines were pretty sure what was going on, although they could not hear the conversation in the conning tower. But this was D day, and B squad had been called aft to the wardroom, so there was nothing to do now but wait.
That morning each of them had been issued one helmet full of water, and now all of them had
shaved for the first time since coming aboard the boat. Then, with the soapy shaving water left, they had washed themselves as well as they could. To Adam they looked a lot cleaner and smelled a lot better than they had before.
The torpedo room had changed also. The chaos Adam had grown used to—the gear all over the place, the sweat-soaked clothes hanging anywhere to dry a little, the marines sprawling wherever they could find space—was gone. Now each man's combat gear was packed and neatly stacked around the walls of the room. The rifles were ready, and each had an oil-soaked rag stuck in the muzzle, other rags protecting the sights and action. The bayonets had been honed during the long days to razor edges and needle points, and were now in their oiled scabbards. Adam could see a possible use for the bayonets, but since they had been given strict orders not to fire under any circumstances he wondered what good it would do to carry the rifles.
There^was tension among them now—the first real tension Adam had seen. Up until now these marines had treated the whole thing as a routine operation, just another skirmish. Now, though, they were tense, each a httle withdrawn. The usual loud laughter and constant griping and minor arguments were all gone. The ones who had not gone aft now sat around the torpedo room quietly talking or just staring at nothing.
For some reason they were talking about the Marine Corps itself. The chief torpedoman had gotten them started on that subject by making some
sarcastic remark about marines, and they were still yakking about it
The chief was old—maybe thirty or forty years old, and grouchy. He tried his best to ignore them. He acted as though they did not really exist as he moved about in his kingdom below the sea, and the marines had learned to get out of his way because he thought nothing of stepping on your face or anywhere else his foot decided to come down.
The chief blamed the marines for everything: the lack of torpedoes, the weak condition of the batteries, the breakdown of the auxihary air system.
Today, however, the chief was in a good humor. He came into the torpedo room with a wan smile, which vanished when he found that the after door had been left open. He yelled something about the watertight integrity of the ship as he swung the heavy steel door shut and swung all the handles around, clamping the door into the frame. Then he stalked over to his throne—a httle platform between the torpedo tubes—got up on it and looked at Adam and the nine marines with a cold, disapproving eye. "The happiest day of my life," the chief announced. "In five more hours you punks will be out of my torpedo room."
**And in thirteen more we'll be right back," Adam reminded him.
That depressed the chief until he had a happy thought. "Maybe the Japs will eat you alive," he hoped. "Or maybe I can talk the skipper into going on home with out waiting for you punks to show up."
*1^Jow, Chiefy,'' Adam said, "you wouldn't leave us all-American boys stranded out here in enemy territory, would you?"
Td be delighted,'' the chief said. Then he looked at them again. "You don't look like warriors to me," he decided.
They didn't look like warriors to Adam either. They were half naked and sweating in the heat, barefooted, and all the tan long gone, so that they were pale white. Even the lean, mean look was fading.
"How do they make marines?" the chief wanted to know."You guys look like anybody else, you act like anybody else, only worse. You come from the same places everybody else does. So what do they do to you to give you the idea that you're somebody? That you're some sort of heroes? That you're gonna win 'em all and never lose one?"
"What does lose' mean, Chiefy?" one of the marines asked.
"That's what 1 meanr the chief yelled at him. *'You all think you're Superman, or something. What do they do to you in boot camp, sit you down twenty-four hours a day and brainwash you into thinking you're great. Do they make you say a thousand times a day, '1 am a marine. I am the greatest thing on two legs?' What do they do to you in boot camp so you come out different from everybody else?"
Adam decided that the only reason the marines now took the chief seriously was because of the time. In a few more hours they'd be in the rubber boats on their way toward the hostile island. It
was therefore a time for seriousness—or silliness. And they were serious.
They looked at each other after the chief asked them that, and one of them said, "I don't know about you guys, but in boot camp I don't remember them teUing me anything about being a marine. Just be one or get your head busted."
"They sho' nevah tol' me Ah was Superman,'* Rebel said. "Just the opposite. Ah thought Ah was doin* real good if they thought Ah was a livin' human bein'."
"Yeh," another agreed. "It didn't seem to me that you were anybody. You were just part of the Marine Corps, the whole shebang."
**The only time you were anybody was if you let the Corps down. Then you were somebody—in the guardhouse on bread and water."
"I tliink that was it," Guns said. "That all-for-one and one-for-all. That finally got through to me."
"I don't know," another one said, thinking it over. "I used to wonder about the Marine Corps. I used to wonder what a marine really was. Then I saw one. You remember Bloody Ridge, Rebel?"
"It was named for me," Rebel said.
*They said, 'Hold your fire or youll give away your position.' Well, I saw a
marine hold his fire until they walked up and shot him. But because he did, we wiped 'em out."
Jason, who was sitting next to Adam on the deck, said, not to the room but only to Adam, "I guess the first time I understood anything about being a
marine was in boot camp. You remember in boot camp you had those field-gear inspections?*'
Adam was ahnost ashamed to admit that he had never been in a boot camp. To hear these marines tell it, if you hadn't been to boot camp you'd never make it as a marine, or anything else. "I didn't go to boot camp. Remember?" Adam said, "I guess they figured it was too rugged for me."
*'Maybe because you were an oflBcer," Jason decided. "Anyway, in boot camp we had this DI. Thafs a drill instructor. I'll never forget that guy. When you first join up I don't know what you think, but whatever it is you don't think your life is going to spin down to just one guy. But it does. That DI gets to be the biggest thing there is. You just can't believe that any one man can get so important. It was funny," Jason decided thinking about it. "I wasn't scared of this DI as a person. In fact, I sort of liked him as a person. I was scared because if you goofed up you knew it wouldn't be any trouble at all for this DI to go out and get a bolt of lightning and drive it right through youi head. But he wouldn't do it just because you aggravated him; he'd do it because you'd goofed up in the Marine Corps.
^'Anyway, there was a fellow in my platoon who was, I think, just plain nuts. He couldn't get with it at aU. He was a real quiet, thin guy; real serious. And he tried. I mean he didn't fight it, he just couldn't get with it. No matter what he did, it was wrong. Now you'd think that DI would give him a hard time—a harder time than he gave the rest of
us, and that was about as hard a time as you could find—but he didn't. He kept working with this fellow, trying to get him with it.