Turner was managing an invasion involving landings on seven times as many beaches as were involved in the entire Normandy invasion. This was by several orders of magnitude the largest such operation in world history.
And the suicide bombers were putting it all in jeopardy. From the flag bridge, White could see the funeral pyres of at least six ships. There were more, smoking and dying along the horizon. He couldn’t be sure how many; the smoke obscured a lot. More black puffs appeared in the air as the fleet’s antiaircraft guns spat desperately at the fanatical enemy fliers.
“General, these suicide attacks are devastating us,” White replied. There was no way in hell that he was going to take all the shit here. The marines were having trouble, too. And Erskine knew it.
The rain of attacks on the transports had cost the lives of thousands of soldiers and marines just in his beach group alone. Worse, it looked like suicide attacks weren’t limited to the air. The Japanese were sending out small boats and minisubmarines loaded with explosives. The subs were particularly dangerous, like intelligent torpedoes. Only a little while ago he’d seen a modern destroyer, steaming at flank speed, blow up from some unseen attack. The ship’s back was broken, and the two halves had vanished into the sea, the whole ship disappearing only a couple of minutes after the attack.
But the reports from shore were just as grim as the carnage he witnessed at sea. The Japs were fighting like hell for every scrap of soil, and then blowing it—and often themselves—up in the process, taking a hell of a lot of fine soldiers with them. Casualties had passed the 25 percent mark and the landings weren’t even five hours old. Worse, even the initial objectives of the campaign were already far behind schedule. Most of the landing platoons had yet to make it through the dunes and over the seawall.
Working from south to north along the west coast of Kyushu, General Erskine’s 3rd Marine Division was responsible for Beaches Pontiac and Red, with ten thousand feet of beachfront property to claim. General Clifton B. Cates and his 4th Marine Division had Beaches Rolls-Royce, Saxon, and Star, with eight thousand feet. General Keller E. Rockey, commander of the 5th Marine Division, had Studebaker, Stutz, Winton, and Zephyr, another eight thousand feet, but considered particularly tough because of the challenging terrain.
White looked at the board and tried to think of a respectable option he hadn’t already tried. “General, the navy’s got every airplane they can get into the sky and I’m unloading the transports as fast as I can. They’ve even brought the goddamn carriers into sight!”
Erskine clenched his fist and pounded it into his other palm. The smoking wreck of an escort carrier was in view only a couple of miles away. Another flattop, this one a modern fleet carrier, had taken a suicide attack into the flight deck, but the wreckage had been cleaned up, the fires extinguished, and the ship—in plain sight to the west—continued to conduct flight operations. “I know, I know. But everybody’s got to do better. We do, you do, the flyboys do. ‘Good enough’ just isn’t good enough for this situation. Whatever the Japs throw at us, we’ve got to throw it back, and more besides.”
The admiral wished he knew how his counterparts were faring on other beaches. Was he doing about as well as average? Below average? Even above average? It wasn’t the sort of question one could ask.
White looked at the depressing landscape represented by the board. Each ship counter represented a ship, but marine counters represented companies. That meant the marine situation was even worse than it looked, because some of those companies had been pretty badly chewed up.
“General, we’ll move the reserve transports up and start filling them. Admiral Chadwick has still got to recover the planes. There’s not much more he can do. I understand that more aircraft, including army bombers, are on the way from Okinawa.” White opened his arms. “We’re going to take casualties going in. That’s a fact. I’m sorry as hell.”
“Son of a fucking bitch,” growled Erskine. “I hope it’s enough. What asshole decided to plan on the theory that the fucking Japs weren’t going to defend the beachheads?”
General Schmidt said, “Listen, Graves, I know goddamn well who made the decision about the beaches. It was wrong, okay? But nobody—I mean nobody—could have predicted this suicide shit.”
White nodded. “They just aren’t human,” he said. “Not like you or me.”
EAST OF SENDAI, KYUSHU, DELIVERY WAGON BEACH ZONE,
1243 HOURS (X-DAY, N-HOUR + 0643)
Ellis toggled his microphone. “DuQuesne Flight, this is DuQuesne One. Time to look alive, gentlemen. Target the airfield and let’s put it out of commission.” He nosed the Skylark of Valeron into a dive. This was low-altitude precision bombing, a really tough way to make a living. If they succeeded, there wouldn’t be any more suicide planes taking off from this airstrip—at least, not for today.
Already VII Bomber Command had every available aircraft in flight. The original mission, laid on during the exhaustive planning sessions, had been the bombardment of enemy fortifications. Squadron after squadron of medium bombers had been designated for close support to the marines and soldiers as they fought and clawed their way ashore. The heavy bombers were taking out airfields and major fortifications.
But the suicide plane attacks had changed everything. Ellis had seen the shit storm at sea, as they flew past the shambles of the invasion fleet. Hundreds of ships were burning or sinking, and planes were taking off from all over Kyushu. Responding to the threat, swarms of army and navy scout planes had been assigned to photo recon flights for the last few hours, watching for takeoffs, and doing everything they could think of to find the originating fields. Put those strips out of commission, and—the theory went—you would slow or stop the attacks, at least long enough to get the forces on shore. Unfortunately, the airfields and hangars were underground, camouflaged, and ringed with antiaircraft guns.
He had one heavy bomb wing (the 5th) of three bomb groups and two medium bomb wings (the 57th and the 2nd). The 5th Bomb Wing, because of the longer range, was heading for the east side of Kyushu. The 57th had the east sector and the 2nd the center. Ellis was flying with the 5th. They couldn’t wait for photo intel to reach Okinawa, so they took off without it, breaking all kinds of radio silence rules as the target info was relayed, in the clear, to planes already flying toward Japanese island.
Once they had the information, Ellis had broken his command into mission groups. It wasn’t normal to do it in flight, but this wasn’t a normal situation. All of the targets were small, well-camouflaged dirt strips, scattered about central and northern Kyushu, so he divided his aircraft into six plane sections, one section targeting each airstrip as the recon observers reported in. Before taking off, Ellis had ordered his pilots to fly low and slow, to really get a fix on the target before they plastered it with a mixture of incendiary and cratering bombs.
For his own section he flew toward a target in a central valley of the large, mountainous island. He led his group of six B-24 Liberators in on the beam sent by a photo-equipped P-38, making direct radio contact with the observer as the heavy bombers came around the shoulder of Mount Aso, one of the higher summits on Kyushu.
“DuQuesne Flight, this is Eyeball Ten; got y’all on visual,” came the laconic introduction from the spotter. He spoke in an improbably thick Alabama drawl and pronounced it “Doo-ques-nee” rather than “Doo-Kane.”
“Eyeball, this is DuQuesne One,” Ellis came back. “Whattya got for us?”
“Down yonder, where the two cricks come together, there’s a lane along through that rice flat, there. They sent two Zekes up that sumbitch not fifteen minutes ago. On the far side of both cricks,” Eyeball added helpfully.
Even then, Ellis couldn’t immediately see the strip. He held the Valeron in a shallow dive, picking up speed even as he backed off on the throttles. Only as he scanned the rice paddies for the third time did he see it: a long, straight strip raised above the wet ground. As he zoomed closer, he spotted several barns and groves of
trees where the Japs could have concealed any number of planes. A truck rumbled into view, rocking and lurching down the lane of dry ground, racing toward the far end off the strip.
He pressed the throat mike on the intercom, speaking to his crew. “Everybody in line back there?” he asked.
“Lined up like a Fourth of Joo-ly parade,” replied Dick Sweeney, his tail gunner.
“On my lead,” Ellis ordered, switching back to the radio. “We’ve got revetments and a strip. Use your guns to sweep up.”
The Valeron picked up speed as he goosed the engines. To either side, he could see the flash of ack-ack guns, several of them popping off along the adjacent ridge crests. He felt a little pucker, and for a moment he wished he still had his little hot rod of a B-26.
But, hell, they hadn’t spotted DuQuesne Flight too early, and the flak was bursting high. The airspeed indicator on the Valeron crept into the red zone and he backed off the throttle a little more. He pressed the trigger, firing the heavy machine guns aligned with the fuselage, while the twin turret guns erupted behind him. Sandy Barker, the gunner, was good; the racing truck abruptly exploded into flames and veered off the wide roadway to crash into the marsh.
Ellis kept up the fire from the nose guns, watching the tracers march along the runway as Japanese mechanics and pilots scurried for shelter. He released his bombs low. Two hits on the runway, and hot damn! An occupied revetment! It must have been a fully armed plane, too, because it went up with an explosion that shook his B-24 as he pulled up.
Behind him he could hear other drops. It took a lot of bombs to put a runway out of commission, especially a dirt strip, and it was too easy to get the runway back in shape.
As he gained altitude, he banked right sharply to turn in a full circle. Had everyone made it? Damn. He could see the blazing wreckage of one of his bombers in a stand of trees just past the runway.
“DuQuesne One! Check in!” he called.
“DuQuesne Three,” drawled the North Carolina accent of Lieutenant Bob Widener.
“DuQuesne Five.” Elliott Sewell, from Long Island.
One by one, the rest of his flight checked in.
The missing plane was DuQuesne Two, Madam, I’m Adams. Fred Adams was from Massachusetts and claimed to be a distant relative of the two former U.S. presidents. Ellis had done the nose art personally, a portrait of Adams bowing to a hooker in a low-cut dress.
Adams had been married a half year before, just before shipping out. He had been delighted by the news that he had a kid on the way.
One bomber for one runway. The Japs wouldn’t put up any more suicide planes out of here, not today. He’d be back to see them again tomorrow.
But it still hurt to lose a plane.
BEACH PONTIAC, 2141 HOURS (X-DAY, N-HOUR+ 1541)
Pete opened a can of peaches and poured them into his mouth, letting some of the juice run down his chin. When he finished the fruit, he held the can over his nose to mask the miasma of ashes mixed with death. Right now, the ashes were winning out. The death smell would shortly beat it, but by then, 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Marines—what was left of it—would have moved to another burning ash pile. The arm movement, the act of lifting the can, still hurt a bit. The bullet had put a pretty nice tear in the skin and everything was sore, but it was hardly the million-dollar wound.
The sun was low on the horizon. Fox Company needed to hole up for the night. This looked like a good place, smell or no smell. Most of the sandbags were still in place. The booby-trapped pillbox where Captain Gilder bought it was a good two hundred yards and a dozen dead marines, behind them.
Pete was sitting with his back against a piece of scrap metal that had once been much of a Japanese mortar emplacement. A small hill stood between this little clearing and the beaches. Nearby was some concrete rubble that originally served as either a barracks or ammo dump. They’d found a covered hole that served as a larder, but it was filled with weird as shit Jap food that nobody wanted to eat. He’d stationed guards behind the sandbags, but he wasn’t counting on the barrier to provide much protection. It hadn’t stopped his men.
The area about him was blackened from fire from the explosion: the Japanese had mined all their positions, as far as Pete could tell. Corpses—about fifty Japanese, about ten American—had been scattered about, but he’d made his men drag them to the edge of the position. He couldn’t be sure of the exact numbers, because few of the corpses were whole. Many were burnt into shapes not quite recognizable as human. He thought about throwing the corpses over the sandbags and out of their makeshift camp, but he was afraid they’d draw animals and noise.
The rest of the men were sitting in a ragged circle, except for the guards. The sound of artillery fire was still constant, though more distant. The machine guns, for the time being, were silent.
Pete tried his walkie-talkie again to see if he could pick up anybody else. Nothing. His hearing, fortunately, had come back completely by the end of the day.
Fox Company had shrunk from one platoon to two squads in the process of getting off the beach and taking out three pillboxes and this mortar battery. Pete’s marines had come across Baker Company when they were pinned down by a Japanese machine gunner and taken that gun out as well.
In terms of men, Baker Company had done a little better than Fox. It had nearly two platoons left. The combined Baker-Fox force had one mortar team and two flamethrowers, making five rifle squads and one weapons squad, more or less.
And Baker Company had an officer.
He was a second lieutenant, a platoon leader named Kinney. He found Pete while the gunnery sergeant was still enjoying the sweetness of the peach juice slicking his lips, coating his tongue. Kinney crouched down next to Pete, his eyes wide, looking back and forth through the darkness.
“Look at us! We’ve been chewed to bits! We’ve got to get the fuck out of here, or we’re all going to die!” He was whispering, but his voice cracked at the end, almost rising to a scream.
Although the lieutenant was the ranking officer and technically in charge, the opinion of a gunnery sergeant counted for a lot. Sergeant Townley, who was behind the lieutenant, gave him a significant look. Need some help with this jelly bean?
Dammit, he couldn’t afford this right now. Slowly, he stood up. “Lieutenant, let’s talk over here,” he suggested.
Kinney turned on him. “Gunny, dammit, I know what you’re going to say, but it’s over! We have to get out of here! We have to get reinforcements, and then we can come back later! Don’t give me any of that ‘we’re marines’ bullshit. We’re not Japs, and suicide isn’t how Americans fight! Understand? We’re leaving, and that’s an order! That’s an order, understand? An order!” His eyes were getting a little wild and he put his hand on his service .45. Behind him, Townley was resting his hand casually on his rifle.
Pete repeated himself calmly. “May I speak with you in private, sir?”
There was a pause as the lieutenant looked at him, then looked around at the men, then looked back at him, all while keeping his hand on his pistol. His eye movements were getting wilder and wilder. He was about to break. “All right, Gunny, but make it quick. We’re getting out of here, understand? We’re getting the fuck out of here!” He wheeled around, yelling at all the men. “We’re getting the fuck out of here! All of us!”
Pete could see some hope among the privates. Goddammit. “Come with me, Lieutenant,” he said firmly but calmly, and started walking. Kinney followed.
Pete heard Townley growling at the men behind him: “All right, you jarheads, look alive!” The gunnery sergeant led Kinney away from the remnant of the company.
The lieutenant was panting, almost like a thirsty dog. He glanced over his shoulder, but Pete kept walking and Kinney followed along, coming around the corner of the shattered, shell-torn building. Part of the cinder-block wall was still standing, after a fashion. It blocked them only to about waist height, but it was the best Pete could do. He crouched down, pulling the lieutenant wit
h him.
“We’ve got to get the fuck out of here,” Kinney said, fixing Pete with a wild-eyed stare. “Don’t you see? I’ve got to get out of here!”
Checking to see that he was safely out of sight of the rest of the men, Pete backhanded Kinney across the face. “Goddammit, you fucking little shit rag, if you don’t start acting like a marine, I am going to shoot your fucking ass right here and leave you to die. Do you understand me?”
“You assaulted a superior officer!” the lieutenant croaked. “I’ll have you court-martialed!”
Pete slapped him again. The lieutenant reached for his pistol, but Pete grabbed his wrist and pushed him back against the wreckage. “I will fucking kill you right here,” he growled, his face an inch away from the lieutenant’s. “You are going to die one way or another unless you get yourself under control. Now!”
There was a pause, and then the lieutenant began to sob. “I’m sorry…I’m sorry… I’m sorry…,” he moaned.
Pete put his hands on Kinney’s shoulders. “Look, it happens. You’re not the first. And it’s not too late. You need to go back, go. But go like a marine.”
This took Kinney by surprise. “Go? I can go?” he said, looking up. The tears had traced lines through the dirt on his face.
“Yes, sir. Look, Lieutenant. We’ve still got a mission to finish, no matter how chewed up we are. But we’ve got wounded as well, and there are probably more wounded—marines we maybe thought were dead—all the way back to the beach. Right now, there’s no help for them, no rescue, no nothing. But we’re not going to leave them there. Marines don’t abandon marines. That’s part of the mission, too.”
The lieutenant was intrigued. “You mean I should get the wounded back to safety?”
“That’s right. Take our wounded, gather all the others you can, get them to safety, then come back and get some more. The situation isn’t as bad down there, but it’s still dangerous enough. You can handle it. Take care of your fellow marines, Lieutenant. That’s your job. Semper fidelis, remember?”
MacArthur's War: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan Page 33