Four-Four-Two

by Dean Hughes

  The men had been prepared for this—in lectures—but no words had communicated the terror Yuki was feeling now. He tried to make himself smaller, wished there were some way to cover his foxhole, to dig deeper, or, somehow, to escape and run.

  The cordite smell from the explosions, the spreading smoke, the spray of falling dirt—all of it was getting inside Yuki, along with the noise and the shaking and swinging of the earth. It seemed more than he could stand much longer, but it kept going on and on.

  For the better part of an hour the crashing never ceased, and every second Yuki thought the next explosion would be inside the foxhole with him and Shig. It seemed impossible that anyone could be alive out there, and just as impossible that he would survive.

  And then everything stopped.

  Yuki lay breathing for a time, hoping that was all for today. He was untouched except for the weakness in his muscles from holding himself so rigid. His brain and ears were still full of the chaos, and he couldn’t see clearly, but he kept telling himself that he and Shig hadn’t been hit. Maybe the barrage was over for now. That might mean a ground attack, but bullets seemed almost welcome after the big guns.

  Yuki waited for a couple of minutes before he lifted himself a little, but Shig said, “Don’t stand up yet.”

  “What?” Yuki thought his ears were ruined. He knew what Shig had said, but the words had seemed to come through a tunnel.

  “You know what they taught us. The Germans give us time to go help our wounded and then they hit us again while we’re out of our foxholes.”

  Yuki did remember that. But he also knew that some of his friends had to be dead. Or torn up and needing help.

  Someone had begun to shout, “Medic! Medic! Help us.”

  Yuki stood up, tried to figure out where the sound had come from. He scanned the area, and then he saw that it was Mat’s hole that had been turned into a crater, a shell having hit very close.

  Yuki was halfway out of the hole when he heard the whistle of another shell, heard the shouts of “Incoming!” all over again. He dropped back into his hole for a moment. A second and third shell hit somewhere not too far away, but after that, the yelling started again. “Help us! Help us!”

  It wasn’t Mat’s voice, but it was coming from that vicinity, and Yuki knew he had to get there. As he scrambled out of his hole, he saw Hirinaka standing up, his helmet off and his head covered in blood. “I’ll be okay!” he screamed at Yuki. “Help the sergeant.”

  Yuki dropped to his knees and looked into the foxhole. Mat was sitting up, staring toward Yuki but obviously not seeing him. His neck and shoulder were covered in blood.

  “Mat, can you hear me?” Yuki yelled, but he got no answer.

  Yuki slipped into the hole and stood over Mat with a foot on each side of him. He could see now that a hunk of metal was protruding from his shoulder, close to his neck. Blood was pumping out of him. Yuki glanced at Hirinaka, who was looking confused and battered himself. “Do you have any bandages?” Yuki shouted at him.

  Hirinaka grabbed his pack, started to search through it. But shells were crashing around them again, shaking everything, making it hard to think.

  Hirinaka found a bandage, tore the cover off it, and then pressed it to Mat’s neck, fitting it around the piece of steel as best he could. But the blood was still coming. Yuki grabbed the bandage, pressed it. “Have you got another one?” he screamed.

  “No.”

  “I’ve got to get him to an aid station. He’s going to bleed to death.”

  Hirinaka’s eyes came up, met Yuki’s. He didn’t say it out loud, but clearly he didn’t think Yuki could carry Mat that far.

  “Help me get him out of here!” Yuki shouted, his words booming in the silence between explosions, but as Yuki tried to lift Mat—who was much heavier than Yuki—another shell struck not thirty yards away and Yuki was thrust back. He landed on Mat, looked into his eyes, saw nothing there, and then scrambled to his feet again, gripped his arms around Mat’s torso, jerked him up with a powerful thrust. By then, Hirinaka was helping, and the two of them got Mat upright. Yuki let Hirinaka hold him, and he climbed out of the hole, reached down, put his hands under Mat’s arms, and dragged him out onto the ground.

  It didn’t occur to Yuki that he couldn’t lift the man. He just did it. Later, he thought maybe Hirinaka had helped—or some power greater than himself had done so. He got Mat over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, and then he ran—or stumbled—straight down through the field he had crossed the night before. Mat had said the CP was in that direction, off the crest of the hill, and that’s where Yuki was heading. He knew all this was forcing blood from Mat’s wound, but he could only think that he had to get his friend to a medic as fast as possible.

  The noise around him was almost constant, the chaos, the raining clods of dirt, but Yuki’s brain told him the fastest way was the straightest way and he charged ahead. Later, he remembered the hammering on his feet and legs, the pain in his shoulders, the sense of panic and terror. He even remembered Mat’s blood soaking into his uniform. But as he ran, he thought of nothing except getting across the opening and off the hill. He never thought to slow down, even to yell for a medic.

  And then a shell hit behind him and sent him tumbling forward. Mat rolled off Yuki’s shoulders and flopped onto the ground. Yuki saw all the blood, the blank look on Mat’s face, thought maybe he was dead, but he struggled frantically to get him upright again, and then he ducked under Mat’s arm and, with a mighty thrust of his legs, stood up. Another shell struck behind him just as he was getting his balance, but he stumbled forward, and then ran again.

  As Yuki came off the hill, he saw a soldier running toward him. He had a red cross on his helmet. “Medic,” Yuki gasped, and he kept running until he’d made it around a little rise of earth that seemed enough cover from the shelling.

  By then the medic had reached him. “Put him down!” the man shouted. “Let me have him.”

  Yuki couldn’t put him down. He collapsed with Mat spread over him. The medic pulled him off Yuki, and then he went to work on the wound. Yuki didn’t watch, didn’t think. He only gulped for air. And then he rolled on his side and vomited.

  It was a minute or so before he could think well enough, breathe well enough, to ask, “Is he still alive?”

  “Yeah. For now. I’ve stopped the bleeding pretty much, and I’m getting plasma into him. But the concussion from the shell must have knocked him out. He’s not coming around yet. I can’t say for sure that he’ll make it.”

  “Do something then!” Yuki screamed. He was suddenly furious. Mat couldn’t die.

  “I’m doing what I can, soldier. I can’t—”

  “I know. I know. But he needs to . . . he needs to live.” Yuki had no idea what he meant by that. Only that Mat was a better man than most.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, Private. If you hadn’t gotten him off that hill, he would’ve had no chance. But you never should have run across that field of fire. There’s no way you should have survived that.”

  Yuki knew that and didn’t know it. He felt the danger finally, but he hadn’t thought about it at the time. Now he was feeling something wet on his leg, and he wondered whether he was bleeding. He touched his pant leg without looking at it, and the medic noticed. “It’s water,” he said, and he smiled.

  “What?”

  “Shrapnel must’ve cut a slit in your canteen. It emptied down your leg.” He laughed. “That’s a little too close.”

  “Yeah,” Yuki said. But he didn’t laugh. He was starting to realize that he had scrambled through falling shells and had run maybe three hundred yards with a guy bigger than himself over his shoulder. He was starting to understand that he couldn’t have done that.

  “I’m going to talk to the captain,” the medic said. “I’m going to make sure you get a medal for this.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not like you think. I’m not brave.”

&n
bsp; “Don’t tell me you’re not brave. I saw what you did.”

  “Mat would’ve died,” was all Yuki could think to say. “Don’t tell the captain. He’ll get the wrong idea.” Yuki didn’t want anyone to call him a hero. He knew better.

  Up on the hill, the shells were still falling.

  Yuki helped the medic carry Mat to the aid station at the CP. And then he waited for his chance to get back to Shig. But Captain Barker, the company commander, saw him start out and called to him, “Wait here, soldier. You can’t make it back up there yet.”

  But what the captain didn’t understand was that Shig was up there alone and had to be wondering what had happened to Mat and to Yuki. And all Yuki could think was that every foxhole must have been hit, and the entire platoon, the entire company, had surely been annihilated.

  CHAPTER 10

  The German artillery barrage continued off and on all morning. Yuki knew he was better off where he was, at the command post, but it felt wrong to him to be hunkered down in a safe place while his friends were taking a beating. Finally, in the afternoon, American artillery guns zeroed in on the German positions, and shells began to whoosh overhead, this time flying in the opposite direction. Before long, the German artillery attack began to let up, and German ground troops, which officers at the CP had expected all day, never appeared.

  But the Nisei troops had paid a terrible price. Yuki had watched medics put themselves in danger at every cessation of the shelling, and he had seen way too many soldiers carried off the mountain. Yuki talked to a medic who said that since the beginning of the battle for Hill 140, the three rifle companies in Second Battalion—E, F, and G—had taken more than 150 casualties, with 28 killed. Noncommissioned officers—the platoon sergeants and squad leaders—had been hit especially hard, and because few replacements were arriving, that meant inexperienced men would have to be promoted to take their leaders’ places.

  In the evening, artillery fire from both sides stopped and Yuki finally made his way back to his squad. He walked through the same open area he had run through that morning, but now there were craters everywhere and mounds of dirt cast in scattered bulges. As he got closer to the crest of the hill, he could see a big opening in the ground close to where he thought he and Shig had dug in. He slowed down, not wanting to see what he feared.

  And then Shig was there, sitting on the edge of a foxhole a little left of the crater. As Yuki approached, Shig stared at him, his eyes too glazed to show much shock, but clearly confused.

  “Are you all right?” Yuki asked.

  Shig nodded, still staring, and then said, “I didn’t think you made it off the hill.”

  “I shouldn’t have,” Yuki said. “Did we lose anyone up here?”

  Shig looked away from Yuki. “Billy,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

  “Killed?”

  “Yeah.”

  Yuki couldn’t believe it. It didn’t seem possible that Billy could suddenly stop existing. He wondered whether he should cry or scream or swear—do something. But the truth was, he felt more hollow than hurt. His brain couldn’t seem to process death any more than it could comprehend what was going on around him. The world seemed to be blowing apart, and he was one of the people making it happen.

  “Oki made it through. A shell ripped one end of their hole away. It tore up Billy really bad. Oki only got a few scratches, so the two of us worked on Billy, but he didn’t have a chance. He only kept breathing for a few minutes.”

  “How’s Oki handling it?”

  “I don’t know. I tried to talk to him a little while ago, but he’s not saying a word.”

  “We’ve got to look out for him, Shig.”

  They didn’t have to tell each other why. They knew what a friend Billy Yamada had been to Oki. But Yuki also thought of what Billy had lost. The war had taken away his chance to go to college, to be a star football player. Yuki had heard people use the phrase “lost his life” but he had never thought what it meant. Billy wouldn’t have a chance to be the man he was going to be.

  Don’t think about it, Yuki told himself. You can’t think about it.

  “What about Mat?” Shig asked.

  “He’s alive. But he would have bled out if he hadn’t gotten to the CP.” It was Yuki’s way of saying that he was sorry he had left Shig alone.

  “I don’t know how you did it.”

  But Yuki had no idea how to talk about that. He hardly remembered his wild stumble down the hill. What he didn’t want was any praise. At home, he had pictured himself as a hero, admired for his courage, but all he could think of now was the terror he had felt. “You’re the guy who stuck it out up here,” Yuki said. “That was the hardest thing.”

  Shig looked away. “It just wouldn’t stop,” he said.

  Yuki understood the thousands of words that Shig wasn’t saying. “I know. I kept thinking about you being alone up here. But the captain told me not to come back.”

  “I thought you were dead.”

  Shig ducked his head, put his hands over his face. Yuki turned away. He knew Shig was crying, but he pretended not to notice. Instead, Yuki looked down the slope. All he could think was that it was only a hill—just a bump on the planet—and hundreds of men had died or been mutilated fighting over it. He hadn’t known about any of this before entering the army, hadn’t understood what it would be like. What he wanted was to grab Shig and say, “Come on. Let’s go home. Let’s play some ball.”

  • • •

  Lieutenant Freeman came along after a time. He asked Yuki to step aside with him. He stood close, which made him seem taller than ever. He told Yuki quietly, “You saved Sergeant Matsumoto’s life. No question about that. But from now on, you have to measure the risk. By all odds, you ought to be dead.”

  “I know. But . . . he was bleeding bad.”

  “I understand. I respect you for doing it.” He was smoking a cigarette. He took a last drag on it and then dropped the butt on the ground. “I guess you know about Don Fujii and Billy Yamada.”

  “Yeah.”

  “With Tahara gone, and now Yamada and Fujii, I’m going to collapse your squad’s two fire teams into one five-man unit until we get replacements. I talked to Sergeant Oshira, and he wants you to lead the team. You’ll get corporal stripes when we can get around to it.”

  “You don’t need to make me a corporal. I don’t know enough to get promoted.”

  The lieutenant studied him for a moment. “Look, Nakahara, you’re younger than most of the men, and you’re inexperienced—but so are the rest of us. I’m not saying that it was smart to run through all that artillery fire, but I’m glad you weren’t willing to let your friend bleed to death. That’s the attitude we need in the platoon.”

  Lieutenant Freeman sounded measured, even wise, but most of what the man knew about war he’d learned in the last few weeks. He’d gone to officers’ school, but he had no more battle experience than Yuki had. All the same, Yuki liked that he didn’t try to glorify Yuki’s actions, didn’t try to make him into something that he wasn’t.

  • • •

  On the following morning, the 100th Battalion moved in and took over the position established by the Second Battalion. One of the soldiers from the 100th, a man who had clearly been through plenty of battles, told Yuki, “You guys soldias now. Hill one four puka mebby not Monte Cassino, but you do good.”

  “It only lasted a couple of days,” Yuki told him. “From what I’ve heard, you guys were fighting at Monte Cassino a long time.”

  The private pulled his pack off his back and dropped it next to his feet. “We loss a lotta boys,” he said. “Dat fo’ sho. But you boys took mo’ shells dan mos ennybody.”

  Yuki hadn’t known that. He knew that he couldn’t imagine anything worse, but he figured a guy who had been in the war for almost a year would claim he’d seen something bigger somewhere. It helped Yuki to think that he might not have to deal with anything quite so bad again.

  • • •


  The soldiers were allowed two days of rest. The Thirty-Fourth Division support troops brought a shower unit to the Cecina River, where the Four-Four-Two set up camp. Every soldier had a chance to get out of his old uniform and take a quick shower. They had been sweating in the summer heat and had slept in dirt for enough days that their uniforms were beyond filthy. In fact, the uniforms were burned, not washed. New uniforms were distributed, most of them once again too large. Then, on the shady side of a forested hill, the men rested, slept, cleaned their weapons, wrote letters home, and slept some more. Yuki was almost shocked by how quickly he and the other troops came back to life. On the second day, they actually joked a little, and the buddhaheads did some singing. But nothing felt loose now, and the laughter wasn’t as careless as it had once been. For one thing, every man had lost friends. Yuki’s platoon had lost about a third of its men, killed or wounded, and some platoons had lost more. But everyone had already learned that it was better not to talk about that.

  Five letters caught up to Yuki at the rest camp: two from his mother, one each from May and Kay, and one from Keiko. He surprised himself by wanting to open Keiko’s letter first, but he decided to save it until last. All of the letters were about the same. Life at Topaz was passable, even getting better, except that the heat was bad. Yuki could read between the lines that war was only an idea to all of them. It was just “the war”; there was no perception that wars were made of battles and bullets and one day following another. He wouldn’t have known how to tell them what he was experiencing if he’d tried, and in the letters he sent back, he was vague about what he had done so far.

  The men got their forty-eight hours of rest, and then they moved out. They marched all day through rolling hills. This was grassy country with few trees, and Yuki was soon sweating through his uniform again. The Germans had retreated, but he knew they would surely take another stand somewhere not too far off. For now, German artillerymen launched shells from distant emplacements, apparently for the sake of harassment. Most of the shells fell harmlessly off target, but the possibility of being hit kept the men wary.