“I could say the same about you,” the Scout said. “I hate being underwater. It was a relief to get off that goddamn boat.”
Charlie smiled to himself. He hated it too. “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“What do you think it’ll be like to go home when it’s all over? After everything we’ve seen and done?”
“You mean do we deserve bein’ around normal folk again.”
Ever since Charlie had returned to duty, the headaches had stopped. The fogginess and dark moments. He was back where he belonged.
“Something like that,” he said.
“They’re the ones I’m fighting for,” Cotten told him. “My family. Every day, I feel like I’m fighting my way back to them.”
Charlie thought of Walsh’s final message, gado. Why. Why was he here, what was he fighting for, why did he die.
In the morning, Saipan’s beaches would become a meat grinder. The Marines would work their way down cargo net ladders, pile into landing craft, and race through ranged artillery fire. Once they hit the beaches, thousands would die on both sides. Thousands of lives extinguished forever while the survivors wondered why they’d lived when so many others died.
Why were they here? What were they all fighting for?
Charlie didn’t think hate was the answer. He’d met only two men who hated the Japanese so much it was their main reason for fighting. Moreau, Reynolds. There was plenty of hate to go around, but it wasn’t enough for most men. Maybe enough for a battle, but not for a war.
No, they fought for love. The same reason Smokey died back at that river. The same reason Charlie was here now. So other men might live and one day go home.
“You told me you signed up to see what you were made of,” Charlie said. “It was the same for me. It’s not why I’m fighting now, but it was why I wanted to fight.”
“And how did it work out for you?”
“I’m still here.”
“I mean did you meet that guy? See what he’s made of?”
“I did,” Charlie said. “And I like him. That’s the problem.”
“So it ain’t about if you can go home, but if you want to. Combat is a seducer. Every part of you sings in combat. You live completely in the moment. You face death and survive. It promises, if you survive this, you’ll live forever.”
“One thing is for sure. You stay out here too long, it’ll break you.”
“Like your crazy captain?” the Scout said.
Charlie said nothing. As much as he liked Cotten, he wasn’t Navy. Sandtiger’s problems were family business.
Cotten said, “Every man’s different. You ain’t him.”
The sky had become pale. Charlie tensed, feeling exposed on the hill.
“Right now, I have bigger worries,” he said.
The bombardment stopped, leaving a ringing in his ears.
D-Day.
A wave of carrier fighters and bombers zoomed over the beach, strafing and pounding the ridgeline about a mile inland. A shroud of smoke and dust hung over the entire island from the previous day’s bombardment. Smoke plumes rose from still-burning fires. Tracers streamed into the sky from AA batteries on Mutcho Point.
The Scout trained his binoculars at the distant water. “We got the best seats in the house for this show.”
“What do you see?”
“The fleet is launching the LVTs. Here, take a look.”
Cotten handed Charlie the binoculars, and he focused them on the distant American warships stationed outside the western shore’s barrier reef. The massive fleet extended as far as he could see, an impressive display of power.
Light gun boats strafed the beach with rockets. Hundreds of armored tractors and landing craft plowed the lagoon’s brilliant blue waters, carrying thousands of Marines toward Saipan’s beaches. A vanguard of amphibious tanks thumped suppressing fire from 75mm cannons.
Geysers of water shot into the air around them as the Japanese opened up with artillery and mortars.
Then the Meteor roared.
The shell screamed across the sky and splashed near an amphibious tank. Thirty seconds later, it fired again. The tank flew apart in a massive geyser.
Cotten sprang to his feet and charged. “‘Remember!’”
Charlie chased after him. A shadow flickered across the hill as a carrier plane buzzed overhead. A distant tremor rippled through the hill. The Meteor fired with a startling boom. He spared a glance at the lagoon and saw a landing craft rise from the water in a flash of light, belching men engulfed in flames.
Time slowed; he saw everything with perfect clarity, sweeping impressions like snapshots. Now that he’d reached his goal, the long terror of the mission left him. His blood up, elation filled him. He was ready to fight. He wanted to fight.
They sprinted to the camouflaged bunker door as another plane buzzed overhead. The gun was attracting attention. Cotten prepared a two-block satchel charge. The Meteor roared again at the approaching amtracs.
“Wait.” Charlie tried the handle. The door opened a crack before he released it. With all the excitement, the Japanese hadn’t secured it.
The Scout grinned. “Sometimes, you get lucky—”
A muffled crash shook the bunker, spewing a cloud of dust rolling downhill. Braddock had just dropped his surprise on the gun crew.
Cotten pulled the fuse on the charge and counted down.
Charlie opened the door as the Scout tossed it and jumped aside.
BOOM
The thick metal door flew off down the hill. Cotten charged into the thick dust cloud. Charlie followed with his Thompson.
An unarmed Japanese soldier staggered toward him, bleeding from his ears. His head pitched back as Cotten shot him with his M3 grease gun. The Scout put another round into the second machine gunner as he tried to crawl to safety.
Charlie followed him to an intersection. The Scout waved to the right and continued forward through the crew’s quarters toward the gun room. Charlie broke off and followed the other corridor toward the magazines.
Cotten’s grease gun fired a series of muffled bangs. Charlie rushed into the first magazine room and collided with a khaki figure coming out. He fired his submachine gun wildly into the man, who twitched in a spray of blood and collapsed. Panting, he scanned the room for more targets. Aside from neatly stacked shells, it was empty.
Charlie sprinted back to the main corridor as soldiers ran out of the other magazine with bayonets fixed. The Thompson bucked in his hands. The men in front stiffened and fell with smoking holes in their chests. The rest retreated shouting. Charlie surged forward and chased them into the narrow corridor.
A rifle cracked. The bullet hummed past his ear and ricocheted off the concrete wall behind. The soldier in front of the line yanked on the bolt of his rifle to chamber another round while his comrades shouted and tried to get a shot.
Charlie walked forward firing in bursts, dropping one man after the next until they lay stretched in a bleeding pile. Even then he kept firing until his gun clicked dry.
“Friendly on your six, sir,” Braddock said behind him.
Charlie released the empty magazine and reloaded then rushed into the gun room. He found Cotten panting with his grease gun in one hand and Colt .45 in the other. A tangle of broken bodies lay strewn across the floor.
The satchel charge had blown them apart. Cotten had put down the rest.
Braddock surveyed the damage. “Holy shit.”
The Scout spat on the floor. “Let’s blow this goddamn gun and go home.”
Working together, they reduced the barrel elevation as low as it would go. After Charlie opened the breech, Cotten and Braddock dropped in incendiary grenades. He slammed it shut as the grenades flared and burned at 2,000 degrees, hot enough to eat through steel.
Charlie deflated as his killing rage evaporated. He stumbled outside and gazed across the shattered landscape. The amtracs reached the beaches, unloading thousands of Marines who ran th
rough ranged mortar fire. Vehicles plowed into the palm groves, shooting at anything that moved. Tracers from Japanese MGs streamed toward the beaches from the ridge. Tiny green figures sprawled on the sand. Charlie watched it all, feeling numb.
Braddock and Cotten joined him outside. The Scout set up the radio. Braddock slumped on the ground and winced at the pain in his arm.
“Sierra Tango, this is Able Sugar, radio check, over,” Cotten said into the SCR-300 handset. “Come in, over.”
The Scout offered it to Charlie. “It’s your pal Rusty. He’s reading us five by five and asking us to send. Tell him the good news.”
Still reeling from the quick fury of combat, he took the handset. His body trembled with excess adrenaline. It had all happened so fast, so unlike his submarine battles, where combat went on for hours.
Was it really over? Had they really done it?
Charlie said, “Target destroyed. Say again, target destroyed.”
Casemate housing the Ryūsei Type 94 naval gun emplacement. Legend: (1) gun room, (2) empty shell casing room, (3) magazine, (4) second magazine, (5) ventilation, (6) gun crew quarters, (7) entry defense, (8) emergency exit, and (9) entrance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ESCAPE
Charlie gazed through a haze of smoke at the combat raging down on the beaches. Gunfire crackled as thousands of Marines assaulted the battered Japanese positions along 4,000 yards of shoreline stretching from Agingan Point to Garapan. No way to tell who was winning.
“It’s not our fight anymore,” Braddock said. “We’re done.”
“I guess that’s it then.”
“Now how do we get the hell out of here? What’s the plan?”
Cotten was scanning the island with his binoculars. “The original plan was to get out the way we came.”
“The original plan was based on getting out before the invasion,” Charlie said.
“That’s right.”
“So what are our options now that it’s started?”
Cotten lowered his glasses. “I can see a Jap gun from here. Shooting at our guys on the beach. I say we call it in and let the Navy take care of it.”
“And then what?” Braddock said warily.
“Then we do our duty. Keep spotting until the front line pushes its way here.”
“And if the Japs come along first?”
“We try to make it to our front line.”
“That’s the problem with getting a tough job done,” the sailor growled. “Somebody higher up always volunteers you for another.”
Charlie said, “Yeah, well. There’s a war on.”
Cotten pointed out the gun and guided Charlie’s focus until he spotted it. The artillery piece was barely visible under camouflage netting.
“Got it,” Charlie said.
He took out his compass and moved along the hill to shoot an azimuth, or the horizontal angle measured clockwise from a north baseline. Cotten did the same. The rest was geometry. The juncture of these azimuths was the target.
The Scout raised the Sandtiger and requested a fire mission. He passed on the grid and direction and signed off.
“This could take a while,” Charlie said. “The boat has to radio Pearl, which then has to radio the fleet.”
With Cotten’s binoculars, he watched Fifth Fleet’s battleships while the battle continued to rage along the shoreline. The Marines were making progress.
A puff of smoke.
“Shot out!” Charlie said.
He swiveled and fixed his glasses on the target as a salvo of shells struck the earth south of the Japanese gun.
“Let’s see, Charlie.” Cotten took the glasses. “John, get on the horn with your boat. Request ships adjust fire. Over, fifty right. Left 150, drop 200. Fire for effect.”
The second salvo pounded overhead. The shells struck the ground near the gun and exploded in a fireball that mushroomed into a massive plume of smoke.
The Scout grinned. “End of mission. Target destroyed.”
Braddock relayed the message. “Well, that was fun. What’s next?”
Cotten grimaced. “We got company.”
A line of open-top, two-ton trucks lumbered through the hamlet of Fina Sisu and rolled to a stop at the base of the hill. Khaki-clad figures climbed out and began to toil up the slope. A platoon, around fifty men.
“They triangulated our radio signals?” Charlie wondered.
If so, the Japanese were better than he thought. Even in the confusion of the invasion, they’d detected the Americans on the hill in short order.
“They’re reoccupying the hill, which is valuable real estate,” Cotten said. “But it don’t matter why they’re here. We got Japs in the open.”
Charlie ran across the hill, shot the azimuth with his compass, and rushed back shouting the number.
“Fire mission,” the Scout told Braddock, who relayed the message along with the coordinates to the Sandtiger. “Jap platoon. Fire for effect.”
“Shot out,” Charlie said.
The shells struck the earth in a burst of fire and hot metal that incinerated two of the trucks and ripped apart a dozen men.
The rest charged, firing as they ran. Bullets snapped in the air.
Cotten shouted new coordinates then bolted down the hill toward Lake Susupe. “We’re bugging out! Let’s go!”
Braddock lurched down the hill after him. He struggled through tall grass. “Grass cut me!”
“Sword grass,” Cotten yelled. “Keep moving! We got incoming!”
“Even the fucking grass is trying to kill us—”
The top of the hill exploded behind them in a massive eruption of dirt and dust. The ground jumped beneath them and flung them bouncing down the slope.
The men got back on their feet and staggered into the thick marsh. The ground cover enveloped them. Ferns, cane grass, bamboo, and reeds. Ironwood trees soared out of the wet soil. Clouds of mosquitoes swarmed around their faces.
“You want to know why I hate everybody?” Braddock was ranting. “Why I think the whole world’s a bunch of assholes?”
“Not right now, I don’t,” Charlie said.
“It’s because some rich assholes started a war! They started a war and sold it to a whole other bunch of gullible assholes, who sailed halfway around the world to kill each other in some fucking jungle!”
Charlie’s boots sank into mud that grew thicker and wetter with each step. “I think we’re close to the lake—”
“And then earnest assholes like you come along thinking it all means something! You can’t wait to throw your life away for some made-up bullshit and drag the rest of the assholes along with you!”
“Can’t you shut him up?” Cotten said.
“I climbed a cliff so I could get chased around by Japs, shot through the arm, and get my face cut up by goddamn grass,” Braddock raged. “Then I blew up a bunch of Japs in a bunker and watched another thirty of them get blown sky high!”
“You’re gonna get us killed next if you don’t shut it,” the Scout growled.
“I just killed fifty people. How is that normal? I joined the submarines so I wouldn’t have to see who I was killing! I’m sick of this shit!”
“Me too, pal,” a voice called from the ferns.
They froze.
“Stay just like that,” another voice said. “You move, you’re dead.”
Soldiers emerged from the jungle around them.
Charlie peered down the barrel of a Garand and swallowed. “Don’t shoot, we’re Americans.”
A grizzled sergeant stepped out of the foliage cradling a Thompson. “Able Company, First Battalion, Twenty-Third Marine Regiment. Who the hell are you guys?”
The invasion of Saipan. June 15, 1944. The gray-shaded areas show the extent of the advance on the first day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
BACKS AGAINST THE WALL
The patrol raced from the marshes across the smoldering ruins of a cane field. Beyond, the Marines had dug in along
the outskirts of Charan Kanoa, now burning under a massive cloud of dust and smoke.
Helmeted heads popped up from foxholes as Charlie, Braddock, and Cotten passed. Artillery shells howled through the air and crashed in the town.
The sergeant dropped Braddock into a foxhole so a medic could check him out. His lieutenant shouted something at him and pointed.
“Come on,” the sergeant said to Charlie. “I’ll take you to Captain Spencer.”
Charlie and Cotten ran after him until stopping at a train of railroad cars lined up near a sugar mill, where Able Company had set up its headquarters. The cars were full of sugarcane. The tracks led past the mill into the jungle.
The captain yelled into his radio, “We’re not giving them a goddamn inch, you hear? Out!” Then he hung up and glared at Charlie. “Who the hell are you?”
“Found these guys in the swamp, sir,” the sergeant said. “Some kind of commando unit. Lt. White told me to bring them your way.”
Cotten sketched a salute. “Lt. Jonas Cotten, Alamo Scouts. We were assigned to destroy a big coastal gun in a bunker up on Fina Susu. Then we spotted for the Navy until the Japs sent a platoon up the hill after us.”
“Uh-huh,” Spencer said. “What do you want from me?”
“We accomplished our mission. We’re trying to get off the island.”
“That’s a no go, Lieutenant. The Japs are throwing every shell they got at Charan Kanoa and the beaches. They got us zeroed, and we can’t retreat. As soon as they get their shit together, they’re gonna try to push us back into the sea.”
“What’s our options then?”
“You can pick your ground and fight alongside us, or you can take your chances,” the captain said. “I don’t give a crap.”
“Come on,” the sergeant said. “I’ll take you back to my unit. We could use the help.”
They dashed back to the foxholes and threw themselves into one. Two Marines were already in the hole.
“Getting crowded in here,” one growled.
“Shut up, Cook,” the sergeant said.
The Marine blanched as a mortar round whistled and exploded fifty yards away. An artillery shell screamed overhead.
Contact!: a novel of the Pacific War Page 12