I think we’re beginning to sense that it won’t be long before we’re in the shit again—and any last jolly before you die is a jolly you won’t have to regret.
The field telephone rings, and a marine picks it up.
From the other end a thin voice comes through the receiver. “Hey, is Mace around?”
The marine who picked up the phone looks over his shoulder, sees me, and then shouts over, “Hey, Mace!”
“Yeah, what?”
“C’mere, you’ve got a telephone call. It’s the mayor of New York. Wants to know if you’ve got a Purple Heart on.”
Yeah, sure. The mayor. Lemme see if he can get us the fuck outta here.
“Hello, this is Mace,” I say into the field telephone.
“Say, Mace.” The voice comes through the other end. “Boy, have I got some dirt for you.” I recognize the voice of PFC Verga, one of the new guys in Leyden and Bender’s platoon.
He continues, “Listen, ya might be able to do somethin’ with this. It’s about Leyden, right? This Okinawan dame is coming up the road—a nice-lookin’ honey—and somehow Bill and this broad work out a deal. Leyden gets some tail and this sugar gets … I don’t know what she gets in return, but anyhow, the next thing you know, Leyden has her up against the side of the hill, bangin’ away at her—an’ a lot of the fellas are crowded around just watchin’, tryin’ to sneak a peek, ya know? It was the damnedest thing!”
We laugh. This really made my day.
“So,” Verga says, “since you guys go back a ways, I thought you might like to know. Ya know, give him the business about it, or somethin’.”
“Oh, you bet I will!” I say. “Here, get Bill on the horn, willya? Oh, and Verga?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell him that Stumpy’s on the line.”
I don’t have to wait long until Leyden gets on the phone. He must have run right over.
“Yes, sir!” he says.
Lowering my voice and making it sound a little gruff, I try to make sure that the South Ozone doesn’t leak out, or he’ll be onto me right away.
“PFC William Leyden?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Yes, PFC Leyden, I’ve been getting some terrible reports about you having something to do with one of these Okinawan girls? Is that correct, Private?”
A short pause, then “Ye—”
“And do you know what can happen to you?”
“Well, I don’t … umm, I don’t, what can—?” He begins to really stammer, and it takes every bit of my willpower not to crack up right away. I can just imagine the boys from the 1st Platoon crowding around Billy, eavesdropping on the conversation between Leyden and the company CO.
“Well, first of all,” I tell him, “what we’ve got to do is take a test!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Now, I want you to take out your pecker. Do it now, son! Check it out, squeeze it off, and see if anything comes out!”
“Ye … yes, sir.”
“And what do you see?”
“Nothing. Nothing, sir!”
“Okay, good. Now do you have any iodine there, or something like that?”
I hear a muffled, shuffling noise, telling me that he’s put his hand over the receiver, and in a faraway voice I hear the confused PFC say, “Iodine?”
He comes back on the line, clear again. “Yes, sir. Iodine, sir!”
“Good! Okay, squeeze that off again, and hold the end of your pecker where that little opening is and put a drop or two of iodine in there. It might burn a little bit, but that’s the best precaution.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Are you doing it, Private?”
“Yes … yes, sir.”
“You know, Private,” I begin again—but I had better make this short, because I can’t hold back my laughter much longer. “I did have thoughts of making you corporal, but I have to think hard again about whether I want to do this. I can’t have my corporals traipsing all over the countryside fornicating with the local indigenes, now can I?”
“Yes, sir! I mean, No! No, sir!”
“Okay, that’s fine, Leyden. Now, you take a look at your pecker every day, and if anything comes out of there, you go down to the aid station—and if you do? Well, I’ll put that in my report, and you can forget all about that promotion. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
“That’ll be all, Private.” I hang up the phone, laughing so hard that I can barely catch a breath.
Soon after, I’m sitting around with my fire team, telling them what I did, when I hear the most god-awful string of curse words, followed by laughter, blasting from the direction of the 1st Platoon.
“That sonuvabitch Mace! That dumb bastard, when I find him, I’m gonna shove my foot so far up his ass! Where is he?”
I knew his platoon mates couldn’t hold back the gag for long. Someone would give me up, sooner or later. It’s a good thing Billy and I are such good buddies—though I’m sure he’s already hatching a scheme to pay me back, in turn.
“Gentlemen.” I rise and bow to my fire team. “I regret to inform you that I’ll be indisposed for the evening, so you’ll have to carry on without me. In other words, I’m making myself scarce before Bill catches up with me. So long, fellas. It’s been good knowin’ ya.”
*
Okinawa Shima, Ryukyu Chain, late April 1945.
“Well, lookee here—marines back from patrol!” Private Freddy “Junior” Hudson grinned at us as we stumbled our way back into camp. “Kill any Japs while you were out there?”
I sat down on the ammo crate beside Junior, taking off my helmet, and began running my fingers through my hair. “As a matter of fact, Junior … we did.”
Junior gaped at me for a moment, trying to decipher exactly what I was saying. Then he started laughing. “Ah, who do you think you’re foolin’, Mace? You can go blow smoke somewhere else! Japs, my ass!”
Why would Junior believe me, anyway? Nearly every day that’s all we did: patrol, patrol, patrol, without a Jap in sight. By all appearances, it seemed that the Japanese had never been on the northern end of Okinawa. We knew, of course, that the army was getting their asses handed to them to the south of us, and we knew that it was only a matter of time before we, too, would head south and into the fray; nevertheless, the monotony of constant patrolling, the absence of Nip resistance, and the familiarity of the same old faces was really starting to get to eager marines like Private Freddy “Junior” Hudson. Couple that with the fact that Junior had joined the marines to avenge his brother’s death on Tarawa, and any real skirmish with the Japanese that Junior wasn’t a part of would’ve turned him green with envy.
Poor Freddy Hudson, only seventeen years old, who wasn’t much to look at, and who couldn’t catch a tan to save his life, got chased all over the USS McCracken, on our way to Okinawa, by Billy Leyden and me. We had Junior fooled into believing that Leyden and I were going to rape him, since we hadn’t had a woman in so long. Off Junior ran, a shot out of a rifle, we had him scared so bad. We wouldn’t have been able to catch him, even if we wanted to. Everybody got a real kick out of that one, all except for Junior, who, evidently, wouldn’t be fooled again.
He was a real ace softball player, though, and Junior had the type of kid-brother personality that everybody liked.
Junior was justified in his skepticism, alright.
“Suit yourself,” I told him. “Really, it was Eubanks over there who did the shootin’, and Weisdack tagged along with him.”
“Alright, wiseguy.” Junior crossed his arms at his chest. “Then tell me what happened.”
We were patrolling an area that we had been over time and again, the same boring hours, only on a different day. To our left was the same recessed area in the ground—a bowl-shaped indentation in the earth, where water had collected long ago, allowing a copse of tall trees to grow nice and pretty, amid the rolling hills in the area.
As a platoon, we passed the area like it was nothing, m
y fire team bringing up the rear. Weisdack was on point, followed by Eubanks, then Whitby, and then myself, as the last man in line.
I wasn’t looking directly at Eubanks at the time, but evidently Eubanks glanced down into the trees and spotted something he didn’t like among the foliage. The next thing I knew, Eubanks brought his BAR near his shoulder and unloaded a full magazine into the trees. Eubanks quickly looked at me, but before I could say anything, he had Weisdack following him into the thicket. Without a word, Bob caught my eyes, a nervous look. I merely shook my head and trotted over to where Whitby stood. Damn idiots, I thought, running down there without even thinking.
Only about thirty seconds passed, and out came Eubanks, panting, followed by Weisdack.
“Four.” Eubanks held up four fingers, between breaths. “Got four of ’em … Nips down there.”
Weisdack merely nodded that it was true, catching his breath as well.
“Damn.” Bob’s eyes darted between us. “What do ya think they were doin’ down there?”
“Probably talkin’ about what easy duty they had, without seein’ a single marine in the area,” I said. “Well, Stumpy’ll wanna know about this. C’mon, we’d better get back with the platoon.”
Junior still looked at me as if someone had rubber-stamped LIAR across my forehead. “So, that’s what happened, huh?”
“Yep. I was about to go report it to Stumpy. You can ask any of ’em. Wimpy, George, Eubanks. We were all right there.”
Suddenly Junior began nodding his head. “Yeah, yeah, okay … You really aren’t kiddin’ me this time, are ya?”
“Junior … I told ya—”
“Whoo!” He got up. “Wait’ll I tell the fellas about this!”
“Hey, hey, wait up, willya?” I said. “Let me tell Stumpy about this first, Junior. In the meantime, wouldja mind asking Weisdack to come over here to see me?”
“Sure, I’ll do that.” He smiled. “Damn, I wish I had been there to see it!” Then Junior held out his arms, as if he were cradling an invisible machine gun, pretending to hose every Jap on the island.
I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag on it. I didn’t have to wait long for Weisdack to arrive.
George sat down, looking as exhausted as he assuredly felt.
“Shame about Ernie Pyle, huh?” George asked as he took a cigarette from his pack. “Guy getting killed like that, after all the shit he’d been through. Makes ya wonder, huh? Don’t even know why he was here, when he didn’t have to be.”
It really was a shame about Ernie Pyle. The only newsman to truly earn his stripes in combat was killed on his first jaunt to the Pacific. We all applauded him coming, and when we found out he was killed, to be honest, some marines took it harder than the president’s death. Still, it was just one of those things. Ernie probably fired more bullets with a typewriter then some marines did with a carbine, and he came over here for the same reasons all of us did: for the love of his country, and to discover what was right and just in this world, even when everything appeared to be going so wrong.
“Look at Junior.” I pointed, and Weisdack’s eyes followed. “Running around here like a new colt, this way and that … never stoppin’ … Remember when we first got here and I told Junior, ‘Everything we told you on Pavuvu about combat is not happening now … but it will’?”
“Yeah, I remember.” George chuckled.
“Well…” I took another long drag. “It’s about to happen, George.”
I wanted so badly to add, But you won’t be coming with us. Though I stopped myself short.
“Yeah?” George replied.
“Yeah. How’s that back of yours, George?”
George stiffened when I inquired about his ringworm-riddled back; nonetheless, he attempted to brush me off. “Oh, it’s fine. Nothing a little medicine won’t cure, is all.”
He knew he was lying. George knew that I knew he was lying. The only one sitting there with a rubber stamp across his forehead that day, was George Weisdack, from Donora, Pennsylvania.
“Listen, buddy,” I began. “Did I ever tell you about Lyman Rice?”
“No.” George shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“A good-lookin’, blond, curly-headed guy … a real nice marine. Got a bad case of ringworm on Pavuvu—”
“Now, wait a second!” George interrupted.
“No, no,” I said. “Lemme finish my story, willya?”
George appeared put off, yet still he sat there, fidgety, like a kid in church.
“Anyway…” I chuckled at the thought of Lyman Rice on Pavuvu, before we invaded Peleliu. “Lyman had a Victrola on Pavuvu, right? Played some great records. Ya know, Frank Sinatra, ‘Without a Song,’ Fred Waring singing ‘Where or When,’ McCormick bellowing The Barber of Seville. The works, really. We had a good time. But there was this damned ringworm … and ya just knew that Rice was in a world of pain, though he was a real tough marine. He wouldn’t let on that it was killin’ him, see?”
“Yeah,” Weisdack said, although he was looking away from me, staring off into the distance.
“Yeah. Well, that was Lyman Rice.” I patted George on the leg.
We sat in silence awhile. Eventually George looked back at me.
“So … well … whatever happened to his ringworm? Did he get it cured?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, he got it cured. In a manner of speaking, I guess. He got killed on the Five Sisters. I don’t suppose you worry about ringworm on the Five Sisters if you’re dead, ya know?”
I tossed my cigarette on the ground and snuffed it out with my foot.
Life, like fire, doesn’t survive without oxygen. Even Paleolithic man knew that. It’s only when you add blood to the equation that it turns the whole world red with flames.
“Look, George,” I said, in a very even tone, so that he didn’t know what was coming. I was about to sucker-punch him from the heart. “Can I ask you for a little favor?”
“Sure, Mace. Whattaya want?”
“I want you to gather up your gear, walk past Chulis, and go down to the battalion aid station. Then I want you to get on a boat and get off this fucking island and go home, George. Go home.”
George finally understood in the silence that followed.
Presently, George stood up, leaving his rifle propped against the ammo crate. He looked down at me. “Okay, Sterl. See ya stateside.”
“Sure thing, George. Stateside.” I smiled.
*
There’s crying out in the darkness. I hear it and my eyes automatically squint, as if looking more intently into the nightscape will enable me to make out the sounds more clearly—to somehow get a bead on where it’s coming from, or to convince myself that it’s nothing, when it really is.
PFC Eubanks is at my elbow, lying right beside me, peering out into the gloom, too.
“Mace,” he whispers. “You hear that?”
I can see the whites of Eubanks’s eyes, big, round, scared. The crying warbles in pitch, spine-chilling, sending gooseflesh up my arms. Otherwise, the night is as quiet as a tomb.
“Yeah, I hear it.” I look away from Eubanks and back out into the night.
Eubanks’s voice quivers. “Sounds like … it sounds like … Christ, it sounds like a baby.”
It really does sound like a child crying out there. Or it could be a Nip trick to entice a marine to go out there and get himself killed out of the kindness of his heart.
A few minutes pass and Eubanks can’t take it any longer.
“Psst … Mace? Say, listen … ya think we ought to go out there and check it out?”
“Nah, bullshit.” I gaze back at Eubanks. “We stay put. Ya got that? The last thing we wanna do is go out there and kill a little friggin’ kid.”
So I’ve solved the mystery of night. It’s not the darkness outside of me that frightens me. It’s the darkness we carry within ourselves that’s truly scary.
On Peleliu, when the sun went down, while on guard, I had conjured up a myriad of
monsters, skulking in their natural habitat, shielded from view behind a curtain of shade. Some of them were real—most of them were imagined. Now, on Okinawa, I should be afraid, but I’m not.
I’m more curious about the explosions flashing off the horizon, way to the south of us, than frightened by them. White, red, and orange lightning paints thin images of a faraway war, where the army is catching hell from the Japanese on southern Okinawa.
The strobes of light are mesmeric. I’m hypnotized. Curiosity asks, What will it feel like to be among those lights? After all, from where I sit, they carry no more harm than the lit end of a cigarette. Logic retorts, You’ll know soon enough, Corporal.
So it’s not the unknown that will kill you, after all. It’s what you think you know that twists your guts up in knots.
I’m sleepy. I don’t know the answer.
Soon we’ll head south. Combat again.
11
HOPE, LIKE DEATH
NOW!
Okinawa, May 2, 1945.
Suddenly we’re running across a dry rice paddy. Thip thip thip thip! Japanese bullets come in from the left and spin up tufts of dirt in front of us. Christ!
“Stay loose! Don’t stop!” I yell.
We run right through the spray of Nip bullets as if we are invisible.
Like hell! The Japs can see us as plain as day, across a field like this! Forty yards of open ground. The earth heaves—a cauldron boiling over with a company of sprinting marines. All kinds of crap zips through the air. Explosions fall, left and right, but I am only vaguely aware of the din. Nip artillery and gunfire cancel each other out in a field bled of sound. That’s the truth—in the middle of it all, it’s life within a vacuum. No time to think. No time to feel.
Or let me put it this way before I run out of time:
This is southern Okinawa—and it’s a bastard to be here.
The whole run takes only fifteen seconds, but a lot can happen in fifteen seconds, on Okinawa. It takes one-point-five seconds for Spud Dunlop to get hit and fall like a sack of potatoes. Tick! In one second PFC Westbrook is eaten up by shell fragments (he’s not going to make it). Tick! Just a few feet over, in all this shit, Lieutenant Sam Menselos falls. Tick! Tick! I sent Mom the wristwatch I took off of the dead Nip on Peleliu. In Queens the watch ticks off the seconds as if they mean something special, but time don’t mean shit on Okinawa. Not right now, anyway. Not with Jap knee mortars coming right up our asses like clockwork.
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