Meat Grinder Hill

by Len Levinson

  If he had more men, he would have launched an instant counterattack to recapture those two lost bunkers, but he didn't have any men to spare. He lit a cigarette and sat at his desk again, sipping tea. Captain Yatsu's pen could be heard as he wrote the new orders on a piece of paper. The soldiers in the bunker sat at their machine guns, feeling dread over the loss of the two bunkers, trying not to look at each other, trying not to show their apprehension.

  Butsko sat in the mess hall at the hospital, eating powdered eggs and Spam for breakfast. Men sat all around him, talking loudly, but he was lost in thought. The letter from his wife, Dolly, still disturbed him. She said she was worried about him, because he hadn't answered her last letter, which he'd torn up immediately after reading.

  He hadn't heard from Dolly in over a year, and now he'd gotten two letters in two months. She said she still loved him and missed him, although when he'd last seen her they'd had a big fight and he'd punched her out because she was screwing other guys. He never thought he'd hear from her again. Should I write her? he wondered. Oh, fuck it. What's over is over. No sense trying to get back what can never be.

  “Hiya, big Sarge!”

  Butsko looked up and saw Frankie La Barbara wearing new green fatigues. He was grinning and rolling his shoulders, jumpy and wild, just like the old Frankie, the craziest son of a bitch in his platoon.

  “I know you don't wanna talk to me,” Frankie said, “but I just thought I'd come by to say so long. I'm going back to the front.”

  “Have a seat, Frankie. I'm not mad at you.”

  Frankie sat down. “Can't stay long.” He looked at his watch. “Gotta leave in an hour.”

  “Say hello to the guys for me.”

  Frankie's mind wasn't on the guys. “I told them I'm still sick, but they won't believe me. Don't I look sick, Sarge?”

  “You look okay to me.”

  “I still get dizzy spells. They say you never recover completely from malaria. I can't understand why they don't believe me, and I was paying off a couple guys in personnel too.”

  “Somebody must've got wise to you, kid. You're too fucking conspicuous: You gotta keep your head down and be calm.”

  “I'm gonna miss all these nurses,” Frankie said, taking out a cigarette. “There's more pussy on this island than you can shake a stick at. You getting any, big Sarge?”

  “Knock it off, willya, Frankie?”

  “That's right. You don't like to talk about pussy. How come you don't like to talk about pussy? Don't you like to fuck, big Sarge?”

  “I said knock it off, Frankie.”

  “Maybe I could break my legs,” Frankie said. “Maybe I could climb on top of one of these buildings and jump off.”

  “You'd probably break your neck.”

  “That'd be even better. You want me to tell the guys anything for you?”

  “I can't think of anything offhand.”

  Frankie puffed his cigarette and looked at his watch. “I'd better get going. Maybe I can get a blowjob before I leave. Take it easy, big Sarge. You want me to give you some names?”

  “What kind of names?”

  “The easiest fucks on the island. There's this nurse called Gleason...”

  “Knock it off, Frankie.”

  Frankie grinned nervously. “Sorry, Sarge.” He stood up and held out his hand. “I'll see you around like a doughnut.”

  Butsko shook his hand. “Go slow, Frankie. Watch your ass.”

  “You bet, Sarge.”

  Frankie walked away, bouncing up and down, snapping his fingers, looking everywhere, twitching his nose. Butsko shook his head and went back to his powdered eggs. He wished he could be like Frankie when it came to women, because Frankie didn't give a shit about them at all. He just fucked them and forgot them. He never fell in love. My problem is that I fall in love with the bitches, Butsko thought, and once women find out you love them, they murder you.

  Butsko chewed the powdered eggs and took a bite of toast. Maybe I'll write Dolly, he thought. It can't hurt nothing.

  THIRTEEN . . .

  The men of the Twenty-third Infantry Regiment dug in on Hill Twenty-seven and wired their defense perimeter. Four seventy-five-millimeter pack howitzers were hauled up and fired for registration on the hills nearby. Colonel Stockton was jubilant about cracking the Gifu Line and reported his success to General Patch, who told him to press his attack.

  Since the Second Battalion had been so successful on Hill Twenty-seven, Colonel Stockton decided to use it to assault Hill Twenty-nine the next morning after an artillery barrage. The First Battalion relieved the Second on Hill Twenty-seven and the Second moved into the foothills of Hill Twenty-nine, where they dug in. Artillery ringed the southern and eastern slopes of the hill and zeroed in on the summit. That took all day. After dinner the troops sacked out and no one had trouble sleeping, because they all were exhausted.

  It seemed like they'd slept only a few hours before they had to get up again. It was dark and they ate C rations for breakfast as the artillery barrage began. The top of the hill flashed with the explosions and looked like a Tire works display, and the ground rumbled beneath their feet.

  The barrage continued until it was light, and the troops lined up to make their assault. They were tired, grim-faced, and demoralized. The steady strain of fighting was getting to them. Many grumbled and said the regiment should be pulled off the line, because the men had been fighting so much.

  The barrage stopped and the men moved up the hill. They'd only advanced a short distance when they came under scattered small-arms fire, and they all hit the dirt.

  "Snipers!” somebody yelled.

  The jungle became quiet as the men scanned the trees ahead of them, looking for the snipers. No one wanted to stand up and take the chance of getting a bullet in the face.

  Colonel Smith called Captain Orr on the radio. “What the hell's the holdup out there!”

  “Snipers, sir. We can't advance.”

  “What the hell do you mean, you can't advance?”

  “The men won't advance against the snipers, sir.”

  “Oh, no?”

  Colonel Smith threw the walkie-talkie to his runner and stood up. He was pissed off that the attack had been stopped before it had even started just because of a few goddamned snipers. He knew the men were afraid of snipers, but believed their fear was exaggerated. Those snipers weren't as accurate as the soldiers thought, and there usually weren't too many of them.

  Colonel Smith trudged toward the front lines, followed by aides. He had a few shots of jungle juice in him and was determined to get the attack roiling again before Colonel Stockton called and screamed at him. Upon reaching the front line of the advance, he saw all the soldiers hugging the ground, hiding behind trees, cowering behind rocks.

  "What the hell is this?” Colonel Smith shouted. "It looks like a goddamned circle jerk!”

  Standing tall, he drew his Colt .45 and fired a shot in the air. "Move out, you sons of bitches! What the hell you think this is!”

  The Gls looked the other way and made believe they didn't hear him.

  Colonel Smith strutted to the front of the line and wandered around, firing his .45. The Jap lookouts for the bunkers on top of Hill Twenty-nine shot at Colonel Smith, but the bullets whistled harmlessly around him.

  “You'd better get down, sir!” one of the Gls called out.

  "Get down my ass! There ain't no reason to get down! You men get up on your feet and follow me!”

  Nobody moved. The men pretended that they hadn't heard. Bannon buried his face in his arms and thought, Fuck him. If he wants that hill so bad, let him take it himself.

  Colonel Smith kicked Nutsy Gafooley in the ass. "On your feet, soldier!”

  Nutsy Gafooley acted as though nothing had happened. He just lay on the ground and thought of freight cars roaring over the Rockies.

  Colonel Smith fired his .45 next to Nutsy Gafooley's ear and Nutsy jumped three feet off the ground, but when he landed he lay still a
gain.

  "The next shot's going right through your head, soldier!”

  Nutsy jumped to his feet. Colonel Smith kicked Homer Gladley, and he got up too. Nutsy and Homer Gladley expected to get shot at any moment, but the Japanese bullets didn't even come close. They began to think Colonel Smith might be right.

  "Get up, you sons of bitches! There ain't nothing to be afraid of!”

  One by one the men stood. Colonel Smith lined them up and told them to move forward. The ragged skirmish line advanced up the hill.

  "Marching fire!”

  The soldiers raised their rifles to their shoulders and fired every third step, and bullets zinged into the jungle ahead. The Japanese soldiers weren't in the trees, as the men believed, and the Japanese fire really wasn't that accurate. They were only the lookouts for the bunkers on Hill Twenty-nine, and they fell back immediately.

  "Keep moving! Dress right and cover down!”

  The skirmish line advanced up the hill, and the Japanese lookouts continued to retreat. Colonel Smith watched Company G and the recon platoon disappear into the jungle, followed by the rest of the battalion. He jammed his .45 into his holster and puffed his cigar as he strolled back to his headquarters.

  Meanwhile his battalion made its way up the hill. The first hundred yards were easy, but then they came within range of the machine guns at the top, and the battle got hot. The men dived to the ground and crawled toward the bunkers. After another fifty yards the fire became so intense that they couldn't move anymore.

  Captain Orr, crawling behind his skirmish line, saw that his men couldn't proceed and knew it was pointless to order them to continue the attack. He called Colonel Smith on his walkie-talkie and told him so. Colonel Smith called Colonel Stockton, and Colonel Stockton called General Patch.

  “What if I send you more men?” General Patch asked.

  “More men won't do it. The machine guns will rip them apart. If we could see where the bastards are, we might be able to get them, but we can't fight what we can't see.”

  “Maybe they can be spotted from the air. Keep them busy and we'll try.”

  General Patch called General Roy Stanley Geiger, the commander of the Marine Air Corps detachment on Guadalcanal, nicknamed the Cactus Air Force bacause Cactus was the code name for Guadalcanal.

  Geiger was stocky, broad-shouldered, and fifty-seven years old. He'd been awarded his wings at Pensacola in 1917, the forty-ninth naval aviator and the fifth Marine in history to earn them.

  “What can I do for you?” Geiger said.

  “I have some men pinned down by Jap machine-gun nests on Hill Twenty-nine, but we can't see where the Japs are. Do you think you can send up some spotters?”

  “We'll try.”

  Geiger passed the order down, and soon a squadron of planes was warming up on the runway at Henderson Field. The pilots took off and flew west toward the Gifu Line.

  Meanwhile the men of the Twenty-third Infantry Regiment maintained their positions and fired up the hill, keeping the Japs busy. The planes swooped down from the sky and made a run over Hill Twenty-nine. They saw the clouds of smoke indicating machine-gun fire, but the wind was blowing, so the gunsmoke dissipated quickly. The pilots couldn't see the machine-gun bunkers exactly, but they could estimate where they were and dropped yellow smoke bombs.

  The smoke billowed into the air and could be seen clearly by the GIs, who opened fire at the jungle beneath the rising clouds. The entire regiment poured everything they had up the hill, their bullets and mortar rounds landing around the bunkers. This made it difficult for the Japs to fire, and the effects were realized immediately by the GIs.

  "Forward!” shouted the officers and NCOs.

  The GIs crawled up the hill in waves, covering each other, making slow but steady progress. By noon they were three-quarters of the way to the summit, making themselves clearer targets for the Japanese gunners. The attack slowed down and ground to a halt. Although the GIs were able to put pressure on the Japs, the Japs were well concealed and camouflaged, whereas the GIs weren't. The battle became a stalemate, with the GIs taking casualties, but not the Japs. Finally, at seven o'clock in the evening, Colonel Stockton broke off the attack. He ordered the regiment to stay exactly where it was; they'd jump off from that point in the morning.

  Colonel Stockton called General Patch again. “Sir, they've stopped us cold, but we're pretty close to the summit. If you give me a good solid artillery barrage in the morning on the coordinates provided by General Geiger's boys, I think I can take the hill and everything up there.”

  “You got it,” General Patch said.

  Major Uchikoshi was infuriated by the American advance against Bunkers Forty-three, Forty-four, and Forty-five that day. Although the Americans didn't know it, those bunkers constituted the left flank of the Gifu Line, and if the Americans took that hill, the Gifu would be open to envelopment from the rear.

  Major Uchikoshi dictated the following orders to Captain Yatsu:

  (1)All bunkers will improve their camouflage so that they cannot be spotted from the air.

  (2)The Americans can be expected to shell Bunkers Forty-three, Forty-four, and Forty-five in the morning; therefore the three mortars reserved for emergencies will be deployed at those bunkers and used to confuse the American effort.

  (3)Additional rifle soldiers and machine guns will be dispatched to those bunkers to strengthen their defense.

  (4)If everything goes wrong and the Americans succeed in overrunning the positions, they will be counterattacked immediately by a detachment of riflemen formed from the defenders of the other bunkers.

  (5)Captain Yatsu will personally lead the defense of bunkers Forty-three, Forty-four, and Forty-five.

  Major Uchikoshi waited impatiently as Captain Yatsu wrote down the final order. When Captain Yatsu was finished, he looked up.

  “Do you understand those orders?” Major Uchikoshi asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you have any questions?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Carry them out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Major Uchikoshi watched with narrowed eyes as Captain Yatsu dropped his equipment into his pack and closed the flap. Captain Yatsu hoisted the bag and thrust his arms through the shoulder straps.

  “I'm ready to leave, sir,” Captain Yatsu said.

  “If the Americans take those bunkers, don't come back here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You may go.”

  Captain Yatsu saluted. “Long live the Emperor!”

  “Long live the Emperor!” Major Uchikoshi replied.

  The Twenty-third Infantry Regiment posted guards and dug in on the side of Hill Twenty-seven. As darkness fell, all firing stopped and silence descended on the area. The men slept in their foxholes and Colonel Smith got rip-roaring drunk. He screamed at his subordinates, nearly set fire to his maps with his cigar, and finally went to bed, snoring loudly and forcing his aides to sleep as far away from him as they could.

  The artillery barrage began just before dawn, waking everybody up. Big 105- and 155-millimeter cannons roared, plastering the hill with destruction but doing no harm to the Japanese soldiers in their bunkers. Captain Yatsu sat on a crate of machine-gun ammunition and ate some boiled grass for breakfast. He'd been constipated for three days, and his stomach felt as if it were filled with concrete. He was a little jittery, because he figured that day would be his last on earth. If the Americans didn't kill him, he'd commit hara-kira. That would be the only proper thing to do.

  While the bombardment was taking place, the top military leaders of Japan were sitting down for a meeting at Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo. General Sugiyama chaired the meeting, which was to determine the facts of Guadalcanal. He began by inviting Colonel Tsuji to apprise them of latest developments on the beleaguered island.

  The officers sat around a long wooden table, papers and pens in front of them. They wore dress uniforms, were well-fed, and Colonel Tsuji hated th
em all for their smug complacency. He rose to his feet resolved to tell them how bad things were for the Seventeenth Army.

  He told them of hunger and ammunitions shortages. He described the valiant effort of the soldiers and the ruthless, nonstop onslaught of the Americans. He declared that the Seventeenth Army could not hold out much longer and that the soldiers must be either reinforced or withdrawn from the island. He painted the picture in the grimmest possible terms. Then he sat and folded his hands, waiting for the response of the leading military commanders in Japan. There -was silence in the room for a few moments as the officers considered what Tsuji had said.

  Admiral Fukudome, the chief of naval operations, was the first to speak. “Perhaps we should try some joint tactical map games before we reach a decision. That way we shall have a clearer picture of what to do.”

  “Games!” screamed Tsuji, going out of control. “It is the duty of the Navy to perform map games before emergencies arise! You all know the situation on Guadalcanal and yet you refuse to take action! I think all of you should resign!”

  “Calm yourself!” said General Tojo, the prime minister Japan and chief architect of the war.

  Tojo was nicknamed The Razor, and he was nobody to mess with. Tsuji calmed himself down.

  But Admiral Tomioka was insulted and didn't feel so calm. “What are you trying to say?” he screamed at Tsuji. “Are you trying to imply that naval commanders are incompetent?”

  “Have you ever been to the front?” Tsuji retorted. “Do you know what's going on there?”

  “How dare you talk to me that way!”

  "Silence!” shouted Tojo.

  Everybody shut up, because Tojo was the most powerful man in Japan, after the Emperor.

  “I agree with Admiral Fukudome,” Tojo said. “We should perform tactical war games to get a clearer picture of what is possible and what is not.”

  The officers adjourned to the big map table in the next room. On it were pieces of wood representing ships, soldiers, and airplanes. The officers moved the pieces of wood around, trying to predict what would happen if an effort was made to resupply Guadalcanal. At noon the decision was reached that less than one-fourth of supplies and troops would get through the American naval blockade of Guadalcanal.