by Len Levinson
Her eyes bugged out of her head. “Why, yes, I believe I remember! I'm an old friend of your uncle's! My God! What are you doing here?”
“I enlisted in the Army after Pearl Harbor.”
“Why didn't you get a commission at least?”
“Patriotic foolishness. I thought I should serve with the ordinary soldiers—you know, the real men.”
“Well,” she said, “I'm not so sure that was a good idea.”
“It wasn't, but it's too late to do anything about it now.”
“Can't anybody get you out of this—someone in your family? Your Uncle Lemuel has very good contacts in Washington, you know.”
“Nobody's been able to do anything, or at least that's what they tell me. I think they're letting me stew in my own juice, to teach me a lesson or something.”
“Let me tell you what happened to me, this morning.”
Ahead of them was a clearing, and Lydia spotted Butsko standing with a bunch of other soldiers. She'd calmed down considerably while talking with Craig Delane, but now the fury returned like someone slowly turning on a faucet full blast.
Butsko was a stupid pig who'd tried to frighten and humiliate her, and she was from the old East Coast Yankee aristocracy. Nobody was going to pull that shit with her and get away with it.
“Wait for me here one moment, would you, Mr. Delane?” she asked sweetly.
“Certainly, Miss Kent-Taylor.”
Setting her jaw, she balled up her fists and stomped across the clearing toward Butsko.
“Don't look now,” said Longtree, “but here she comes. I'd say she's in a pretty bad mood.”
Butsko couldn't help chuckling. “I'd give anything to have seen the look on her face when she saw the Jap's head.”
Bannon tossed his cigarette at the ground and glanced at her. “She really looks fit to be tied.”
Butsko chuckled again, because he was having fun. “Just relax and let me handle everything. Women, even when they're pissed off, are nothing to handle if you just know what you're doing.”
He heard her approach, combat boots mashing into the mud, and pretended he didn't hear anything, as casual and loose as an old soldier could be. The angrier she got, the calmer he'd get: He knew from experience that that was a good way to handle women. If they wanted to fight and you didn't, it really drove them nuts, because it made them think you didn't care about them enough to get mad.
Paw!
Lydia Kent-Taylor punched Butsko directly in the mouth with all her strength, and it astonished him more than it hurt. She kicked him in the shins and he screamed in pain, holding one leg in his hands and hopping around on the other. Pulling back her arm, she lambasted him in the face, knocking him on his ass.
If she had been a man, Butsko would have got up and killed her; but she was a woman and he couldn't strike a woman. He rolled away, trying to escape, but she jumped forward and kicked him in the ass. The men from the recon platoon watched in horror as she kicked him in the stomach, and when he doubled up she kicked him in the ass again. She was beating up the man they thought was the toughest in the world.
“Halp!” Butsko screamed.
He tried to get up but she tripped him and he fell down again. She kicked him in the thigh and he howled in pain. None of the men dared touched her, because she was woman and they couldn't cold-conk a woman.
Suddenly she stopped. She looked down contemptuously at Butsko quivering and whimpering on the ground, then turned and walked resolutely back to Craig Delane, her head held high.
Bannon bent over to help Butsko to his feet. “You really showed us how to handle her, Sarge,” he said.
Captain Ilecki had black hair, a thin face, and a ratty, furtive manner. His CP was a hole in the ground in back of a boulder ten feet high, because he tended to feel insecure. He sat in the hole, looking at his map, a Pittsburgh stogie held between his yellow teeth. Lieutenant Breckenridge approached and knelt down.
“You wanted to see me, Joe?”
“Yes. How're you doing, by the way?”
“We're okay, except that we've got Lydia Kent-Taylor traveling with us.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“You lucky bastard! She'll probably make you famous! You could go home and run for Congress if you wanted to, I'll bet.”
“Who in the fuck wants to run for Congress, and what makes you think I'll live that long?”
Captain Ilecki had always been interested in politics, and his father was an alderman in Chicago. After the war Captain Ilecki wanted to run for Congress. But he too had to survive first, and that brought him back to his map.
“We've got orders from Battalion,” he said. “They want us to occupy this jungle all the way to the airfield.”
“When?”
“Sometime today. They're gonna shell it first and they'll let us know.”
“What makes them think there are Japs in there?”
“I don't know.”
“Didn't you tell them there are no Japs in there?”
“I don't know that there are no Japs in there. Do you know there are no Japs in there?”
“I couldn't say for sure, but I don't think there are. Some were in there last night, but they're gone now.”
“How do you know?”
“It's common sense, Joe. If there were Japs in there, we'd know about it.”
“What makes you think so?”
“We would've heard them.”
Captain Ilecki smirked. “C'mon, you know better than that. You don't have to hear them for them to be there.”
Lieutenant Breckenridge was getting tired of the argument. “Okay, we'll do it your way.”
“It ain't my way, it's Battalion's way.”
“Okay, okay. When do we jump off?”
“I'll let you know as soon as I find out. Any other questions?”
“No.”
“You can go back to your zoo now, the one they call the recon platoon. And by the way, you can tell Lydia Kent-Taylor that if she really wants to take a picture of a handsome officer, she can take a picture of me.”
“I'll tell her that,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said, standing up. “I'm sure she's just dying to meet you.”
Craig Delane was lying in his hole, smoking a cigarette and listening to the walkie-talkie. The airwaves buzzed with messages, and a red spider crawled along the rim of the foxhole. Birds chirped in the trees and a monkey leaped from branch to branch.
Lydia Kent-Taylor came into his line of vision, held up her camera, and took a picture of him. Leo Stern was two steps behind her, a shit-eating grin on his face.
Lydia took another picture of Craig Delane, then jumped into the foxhole with him. “I've been thinking about you,” she said, “and I got a great idea for a story: Society Playboy in a Foxhole. About how you wanted to be an enlisted man instead of an officer, so you could be with the men. I'll take the pictures and Leo here will write it up. What do you think?”
“Sounds awfully corny to me.”
“It is corny, but it's the kind of thing that sells newspapers.”
Leo joined them in the foxhole and asked Craig Delane questions as Lydia snapped pictures. Lieutenant Breckenridge returned, his carbine slung over his shoulder and his helmet straps hanging loose. He looked at all of them together and scratched his jaw.
“Delane, get Butsko for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Craig Delane rose quickly and climbed out of the foxhole, ending the interview. Lydia and Leo Stern would have liked to continue, but they knew better than to interfere with the war. Lieutenant Breckenridge dropped into the foxhole, sat down, and took out his map.
“I've got work to do,” he said. “Hope you don't mind.”
Lydia snapped his picture. “Do what you have to. Don't pay any attention to us.”
Lieutenant Breckenridge looked at his map, wondering how he could ignore a woman taking pictures of him. Lydia changed position, taking profile shots, overhead shots, and
after changing lenses, low-down wide-angle shots. Presently Craig Delane returned with Butsko, who was black and blue, with a split lip and his left eye half closed.
Lieutenant Breckenridge took one look and nearly shit a brick. “What in the hell happened to you!”
“I fell down,” Butsko replied in an apologetic tone.
“You fell down! You didn't fall down! You've been fighting again! If I told you once, I told you a thousand times that I don't want any more of that goddamned idiotic fighting in this platoon! I told you to save it for the Japs! Get it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Butsko glanced at Lydia Kent-Taylor, who eyed him haughtily. She raised her camera and pointed it at Butsko. “This will make a very good picture,” she said. “A real battle-scarred combat veteran.”
Butsko scowled as she took his picture.
Lieutenant Breckenridge cleared his throat. “I wonder if I can speak with my platoon sergeant alone for a few moments.”
Lydia Kent-Taylor blew dust off her fifty-millimeter f2 Summitar lens. “Sure thing, Lieutenant. Is anything going to happen here this afternoon?”
“Yes, but I'll tell you about it after I discuss it with my platoon sergeant.”
“I understand, Lieutenant. We'll talk with you later.”
Lydia and Leo Stern walked back to their tents, leaving Lieutenant Breckenridge with Butsko and Craig Delane.
“I don't know how much more of those two I can handle,” he said.
“I know what you mean,” Butsko replied.
Craig Delane thought it was time to let his platoon leader and platoon sergeant know he was no ordinary dogfaced GI like all the others.
“Miss Kent-Taylor and I knew each other quite well in New York,” he said, exaggerating somewhat because he was an asshole despite his upper-class background, or maybe because of it.
Butsko and Lieutenant Breckenridge stared at him.
“Yes,” Craig Delane continued, “her family and my family are quite close.”
Butsko and Lieutenant Breckenridge looked at each other.
“It was such a strange coincidence seeing her here.”
Butsko took one step toward Craig Delane and grabbed his shirt in his fist. “Well, you'd better make sure she puts in a good word for us higher up, because if she doesn't, it's gonna be your ass.”
“Yes, Sergeant!”
Butsko let him go and pushed him away. ‘Take a fucking walk.”
“Yes, Sergeant!”
Craig Delane scurried away, and Butsko turned to Lieutenant Breckenridge. “We've got to get rid of that bitch,” he said.
“We've got to be nice to her. I don't want any more funny business from you. Don't think I don't know that you had something to do with that head being in her latrine.”
Butsko looked him in the eye. “Who, me?”
“Yes, you. Cut that shit out.”
“But, sir—”
“Don't but me,” Lieutenant Breckenridge interrupted. “Just do as I say, and I don't want to hear anything more about it. Come over to my foxhole and I'll tell you what we're going to do this afternoon. And by the way, I don't know who kicked the shit out of you, but he did a great job.”
Craig Delane joined Lydia Kent-Taylor and Leo Stern, who were sitting cross-legged in the shade of a huge, lush canopy of leaves. Leo wrote in his notebook, and Lydia cleaned out the interior of her Leica camera with the camelhair brush.
“Any news?” she asked, as Craig Delane sat down.
“Yes, but I don't know what it is. Lieutenant Breckenridge is telling it to Sergeant Butsko right now.”
Lydia shuddered. “What a stupid brute he is!”
“Sergeant Butsko?” Craig Delane asked. “Well, he may be a brute, but he's not stupid. He knows more about small-unit tactics than most officers, and he's absolutely without fear. The men in this platoon would follow him anywhere.”
“Really? Would you?”
“I have. With all his shortcomings Butsko is a helluva soldier. If you want to do a story about someone, you should do one about him. He's probably the most decorated soldier in the regiment.”
“But he's such an animal!”
“Well,” Craig Delane said thoughtfully, “he's certainly an animal. You wouldn't want to go to the ballet with him, but in a war there's nobody I'd rather be with than Butsko. I could tell you stories about him that you wouldn't believe, but I believe them because I was there and I saw them happen with my own eyes. In fact, when this war is over and if I'm still alive, Butsko can visit me anytime and he can stay as long as he likes. I'd be honored to have him with me. I think he's a great man.”
Lydia was confused by what Craig Delane was saying, because she couldn't imagine how Butsko could be a great man, but she knew from her previous interview with Delane that he'd been in a lot of combat with Butsko. Delane would be in a position to know, and he was no fool, although he certainly was an asshole at times.
“Leo,” she said, “maybe we ought to do something on Butsko, and Lieutenant Breckenridge seems kind of interesting too; we haven't done that much with officers.” She looked at Delane. “What do you think of Lieutenant Breckenridge?”
“Well,” Delane said, “let me put it this way: Lieutenant Breckenridge is the only officer I've seen who can handle Butsko.”
“Why's that?”
“Because Lieutenant Breckenridge is a big, tough son of a bitch,” he said, “and Butsko respects him.”
NINE . . .
At eleven o'clock the artillery barrage began, plastering the jungle in front of Company A and the recon platoon. Birds shrieked and flew away, but the other creatures couldn't escape. Trees containing families of monkeys crashed to the ground, and lizards, which thought they were safe in their burrows, were blown into the air. Huge chunks of shrapnel whizzed in all directions, slashing apart trees and decapitating animals. Fires broke out and huge clouds of smoke rose into the sky.
Lydia photographed it standing on the hood of her jeep, using her 135-milliineter telephoto lens. “Beautiful,” she mumbled, twirling dials and aiming. “Like the end of the world.”
Nearby the recon platoon lay in a skirmish line, ready to move out. It would be on the extreme left flank, with a portion of the jungle and the beach in front of it, and Company A linked up on its right. The men smoked cigarettes and talked with each other. Some reread letters from home or Bibles that they'd been carrying around with them since the war began. A few watched the bombardment listlessly, because they'd seen so many others just like it.
Lydia jumped down from the jeep and advanced toward the skirmish line. She got in front of the men, dropped to one knee, screwed the 35-millimeter lens into the Leica, and took a picture. The recon platoon prepares to move into action would be the caption. She duck-walked toward Lieutenant Breckenridge, and snapped one of him. The platoon leader studies his map prior to the battle. She moved the camera to her left and Butsko filled the frame, gazing malevolently at her. Master Sergeant Butsko waiting for the order to move out.
The shelling lasted until noon, augmenting the sound of the bombardment of the mission fortress on Kokengolo Hill. In the rear areas artillerymen stripped to their waists fed shell after shell into their big guns, while other artillerymen pulled the cords that fired them off. Nearly all of them suffered hearing impairments from the terrific ear-shattering sounds of artillery in action. Many of them had busted eardrums even before they'd left their training camps in the States.
The shelling stopped on time, and everybody's ears rang, whistled, or buzzed. The forest was filled with smoke, and Lydia thought the atmosphere would be marvelous for pictures of war as it really was.
Lieutenant Breckenridge stood up. “All right,” he said, “let's move it out! Stay dressed right and covered down! Let's go, and keep your eyes open!”
The men stood, lined up, and advanced cautiously toward the jungle, with Lydia and Leo Stern following even more cautiously. The GIs passed through a nightmare landscape of broken trees a
nd smoking shell craters. Pfc. Hart heard something in front of him and fired off a round, making everyone drop down, but a patrol investigated and found nothing there. The platoon moved out again, combing the jungle and watching the beach. They met no resistance after one hundred yards, and it became obvious that no Japs were in the jungle. Lydia ran ahead with her camera, got low in the bushes, and photographed the men coming toward her. The recon platoon advances cautiously through a Jap-held jungle somewhere in the South Pacific.
At three o'clock in the afternoon they reached the edge of the jungle. In front of them was the open ground of the airfield, and in the distance were airstrips and the fortress on Kokengolo Hill. They deployed across the edge of the jungle closest to Kokengolo Hill, because they'd attack from that direction during the big push scheduled for the following morning.
Lieutenant Breckenridge told them to dig in and they took out their entrenching tools, looking for spots where the earth wasn't so rocky or interlaced with roots. Lieutenant Breckenridge walked toward Lydia Kent-Taylor, who was now photographing the men digging their foxholes. The recon platoon digs in, expecting a Jap counterattack. Leo Stern sat on a fallen log nearby, scribbling furiously.
“Are you going to stay, ma'am?” Lieutenant Breckenridge asked.
“Of course.”
“I'll have Private Delane dig you a foxhole.”
“Do you think we'll need one?”
“You never can tell,” Lieutenant Breckenridge replied.
Private Nanamegi, known as the Mosquito, was on guard duty in the fortress and gazed out at the landscape around him through binoculars. There was a lull in the shelling, and he had to see if an American attack was being launched. Scanning the jungle at the edge of the airstrip, he could see nothing suspicious.
He aimed his binoculars south and saw something glint in the sun. His heart beat faster as he focused on that spot: It looked as though American soldiers were there, digging in.
“Sergeant Suzuki!” he cried.
“What is it!” demanded Sergeant Suzuki.
“I see Americans over there!”