Authors: Leon Uris
“From this valley they say you are going,
And I’ll miss your bright voice and sweet smile,
But remember the Red River Valley…”
“Land!” I jumped from my sack and clambered topside. The morning was steamy hot. The transports cut their speed to almost a drift and edged their way to the baked-out, brown-hilled island dead ahead. It became still as death. We began passing ships, dozens of them, lying anchored and manless. Some were rusted and filling with water, like ghost ships. We wove a course between them toward the lifeless-looking land. A thin fog drifted about us. It was eerie to see the still ships and the background of weird, barren ridges, like we had come to the end of the world.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“New Caledonia. We’re pulling into Noumea harbor now. Spooky, isn’t it?”
“Like a devil’s island, I’d say.”
We passed through the mined and netted channels into the harbor. Then I saw it! The United States Navy. All about, battlewagons, carriers, cruisers, destroyers, lay at anchor. So this was where they were hiding.
The bosun’s pipe was heard: “Now hear this, now hear this. All Marines return to your quarters. You will square away and stand by for a practice landing with transport packs.”
The practice was a mess. We were assigned to the high midship net. It seemed like five hundred feet to the water. Two legs were broken in the transfer to the landing boats below. The heavy load of full upper and lower packs, bedrolls, ammunition, and radios just about sunk us through the boat bottom. We drifted about for a hour and returned to the side of the ship.
Lighttower froze on the net, exhausted, and had to be dragged aboard by Huxley, who was standing on the bridge growling at the mad mess below.
It was brutal and stupid to introduce a green bunch to the tricky nets in such a manner. It was lucky there weren’t a half dozen fatalities. After it was over they were all glad, though, because lighter packs and lower nets would seem like child’s play after this.
The shower was jammed after the practice so I doused my face in my canteen water and went topside. Some gear was lowered into a barge, then the Jacob’s ladder dropped. Two men, a captain and an enlisted man, were climbing aboard. Lieutenant LeForce and Sergeant Paris from Intelligence were waiting to meet them on deck.
“Captain Davis, Division Intelligence,” he introduced himself, “and my assistant, Sergeant Seymour.”
“LeForce, and this is my chief, Sergeant Paris. When the gear gets aboard arrange quarters for the Sergeant. Please come with me, Captain Davis. Major Huxley is waiting for you.”
Paris saw me and came over. “This is Seymour, Intelligence. He’s just off Guadalcanal.”
“Glad to have you aboard,” I said, studying the sallow-faced, rail thin Marine.
“Can’t say as I’m glad to be aboard.” He smiled a sardonic smile.
“Mac is a communications chief. Do you have an extra sack in your section for Seymour? I’m loaded.”
“I think so,” I said.
First Sergeant Pucchi approached the Jacob’s ladder, muttering to himself.
“Hey, Pucchi, were the hell are you going?”
“Ashore.”
“But we’re supposed to pull out right after the other ships finish practice.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m going to sit the goddam war out on this goddam island.”
“How come?”
“The sonofabitches told me that first sergeants aren’t expendable. I got to stay here and keep records.”
“You lucky bastard,” Paris said.
“I feel lousy about this,” Pucchi moaned. “First time I been out of the company for six years.”
“Aw jees, don’t feel bad. I’ll get Herman to save a ribbon for you.”
“Cut the clowning, Paris, do you think I want to stay behind? He glanced at the burned-out, empty hills and winced. “I hope the guys don’t think I’m chicken—it wasn’t my idea.”
“Tough break, Pucchi,” Paris said, slapping him on the back.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Anything on that hellhole island?” he asked Seymour, pointing to the searing mass of land.
“A leprosy colony and a whore. Even got to have M.P.s to keep a line in order—that is if you don’t mind laying a whore fifty years old with three kids in bed with her. The place wouldn’t be so bad if someone planted a tree.”
Pucchi’s eyes filled with tears. He swung over the rail to the Jacob’s ladder. “Good luck, fellows,” he whispered and lowered to the waiting boat.
“Some guys don’t know when they’re well off,” Seymour spat. He was a sarcastic bastard. “Where’s quarters, Mac?”
It got hotter as the convoy moved north towards the equator. In the hold, you had to peel to get relief. The convoy plodded steadily and slowly in a gentle sway and continuous whisper of the chugging engine.
The only movement was muffled voice and action of the poker players on the boarded hold at night. I was killing time, waiting for someone to go busted so I could get a seat in the game, when I noticed Gunner Keats standing in the hatchway, trying to get my attention. I went over to him. “What’s doing, Jack?” I asked. I always addressed him by his first name when we were alone. Keats moved me over to a dark corner, very quiet-like and secretive. I tried to think what could be wrong. “Did Huxley find out we jumped ship Christmas Eve?” I asked.
He looked about to make sure we were unwatched, then reached inside his shirt and handed me a bottle. “It’s for the squad, Mac. Happy New Year.”
“Scotch, real Scotch! Christ, I forgot it was New Year’s Eve…nineteen forty-three…thanks, Jack.”
“Happy New Year, Mac. I hope the ship’s captain doesn’t miss the bottle.”
I went to my section and aroused my boys and placed my finger to my lips, lest the secret spread. Seymour, the Intelligence man, seemed to wake at the first step and spring up with a catlike motion. I asked him to join us. We all moved deftly to the head and locked the door. I broke out the bottle.
“Compliments of the Gunner,” I said. “Happy New Year, men.”
“New Year’s?”
“How about that?”
“Scotch.”
“I’ll be go to hell.”
I passed the bottle. Marion skipped his swig and carefully measured Spanish Joe’s, pulling the bottle from his lips and passing it on.
“Aw gee, Marion, I thought you wanted me to drink yours too.”
We managed three small slugs apiece. We were all fully awake now and the steamy hold held no invitation for further sleep, so we began shooting the breeze.
“New Year’s Eve,” L.Q. said. “Know where I’d be now? In my old man’s car with a woman, heading for a party. You know, the high school crowd. We’d snitch a drink or two and get a nice warm glow up, then dance and get friendly with our dates. Dance till two or three and then find a nice dark corner and make out. The girls would all go upstairs and sleep and we’d sleep on the couch and the floor. Then around six, get into the cars and head for an all-night beanery and eat big plates of ham and eggs, just when the sun was coming up.”
“That’s about the way we did.” Danny said. “The folks let us get away with it once a year—you know, all being in the same crowd.”
“New Year’s should be spent in a whorehouse,” Spanish Joe said. “The girls usually get good and crocked and you can beat paying them for a couple of tricks.”
Marion’s face flushed, then Spanish Joe cut himself short and looked apologetic. I wondered whether it was spontaneous or intentional.
“You guys ought to get some hay in your hair. Nothing like a square dance on New Year’s,” seasick Seabags said.
“We generally get it where we can,” Burnside said, “Singapore, Reykjavik, Rio…it’s all the same to a gyrene.”
“I liked mine in a nightclub, a good loud noisy drunken nightclub with a rotten floor show and a ten-dollar cover charge,” Seymour said, holding up the last shot in the bottle. “I used to drink this all the time,” he said, “but a man should drink it slowly, sip it, get the full flavor. Never mix it. Let it trickle over the ice cubes. Good Scotch is nothing to be devoured like a hambone.”
We turned and looked at the thin man with the gaunt face. It was hard to judge his age. Or much else about him, for that matter. His good taste was obvious, but it is hard to tell the rich from the poor or the cultured from the ignorant when they are all in dungarees.
“You’re the guy from Intelligence, from Guadalcanal?” L.Q. asked.
“Yes,” he almost whispered, “I was just on Guadalcanal.”
“How was it, pretty rough, huh?”
“Rough?” he answered, laying the bottle down. “Yes, it was rough.”
“Give us the word.”
“O.K., I’ll give it to you.” He perched himself on a sink. His eyes narrowed. The ship speeded her engines, sending a steady vibration through her hull.
“First to land against Japan,” Seymour started, “the First Marine Division hit Guadalcanal, and the Second Regiment and paratroopers hit the islands across Skylark Channel—Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tanembogo, all three nestled in a cove of Florida Island. We came in with about twenty hours’ rations.” His voice broke suddenly. “Let me tell you guys something, I studied military campaigns, lots of them…”
“You a college boy?” I asked.
“Cornell, class of thirty-eight.” He snickered sourly. “There may be bigger and bloodier battles than Guadalcanal, but when the book comes out, Guadalcanal will always be the first one.”
Seymour began to tell his long terrible story, which I knew would be part of the folklore of our country for all time. The beginning was sad, with a handful of brave men on a tiny foothold, pitted against the might of the Japanese Empire.
He reached for a cigarette and cupped his hands to keep them from shaking. We leaned forward and hung on his every word.
“The Navy dumped us there and ran. The Army and Dugout Doug sat back and waited.”
“To hell with them.”
“You can say that again,” Seymour snapped. He told of the frantic Japanese efforts to push the Marines into the sea. Gigantic air strikes and but a few crippled Marine planes against them, planes obsolete in everything but the guts of the pilots. Flyers like Joe Foss, Carl, and Boyington’s Bastards to stop them. And then came the Tokio Express! The Imperial Fleet to shell them at point-blank, with nothing in their way but a handful of plywood PT boats.
Jap reinforcements landed past Marine lines by the thousands as they helplessly sat and watched. And the battles. The Tenaru, the Matanikau—yet their lines never fell. Japs stacked up like cordwood in the rivers but on they came. Marine heroes born each minute. A blind man given instructions where to fire a machine gun by a paralyzed man.
“We scratched back where we could. Sent our patrols to rove and disorganize them. Maybe fifty would start out, maybe five would come back. We fought by night, mostly in the jungle, on the river banks with bayonets and fists. They’d scream for our blood in the dark. Those Marines that didn’t get cut down by bullets got cut down by malaria and yellow jaundice and crud.”
Seymour smashed out the cigarette and a strange look came into his eyes. “I saw them lying there in the grass near the river with a hundred and four fever, so weak with dysentery they couldn’t stand, but they’d stick at their posts as long as they could squeeze a trigger.”
At last help came. An Army unit of National Guards who fought like Marines, the never to be forgotten 164th Regiment. Many times when reinforcements came they had to wait for a Jap landing party to unload first.
The Eighth Marines, sick with mumu from Samoa, had been forced to retreat, Seymour told us.
“The Sixth will never retreat,” Burnside said.
And then came the terrible night that the Tokio Express caught four cruisers like sitting ducks and sank them all. Seymour related the subsequent caution of our Navy in trying to lure the Japs into open water instead of coming into the Slot. The Japs knew this and hugged land.
“We were up to our ass in blood, and sick and beat out. The Tokio Express was heading in in full battle array, and only the gutty little PTs to stop them.” He lit another cigarette. “It was November 15th when the voice from the Lord came. Ching Lee on the U.S.S.
Washington
led the fleet into the Slot and we caught the Japs cold turkey.” From a high-pitched crescendo, his voice trailed off. “The Jap navy never came back and we could at last get out of the foxholes and go after them.”
There were several moments of silence in the smoke-filled head. Finally Andy spoke up. “What’s there now?”
“It’s going to be a long war, buddy. Look at the map. It’s mean terrain and there’ll be Japs there forever. The First Division is either on the way or going to Australia and the Second and Eighth Marines are corked out. You’ve got thirty miles to go.”
“Wake Island, here we went.”
Seymour threw his cigarette butt into a toilet bowl and walked to the hatchway and unbolted the door. “Tell your grandchildren the gyrenes were the first. Or maybe you won’t have to tell them about it. They may be fighting out here themselves.”
“They sent for the Army to come to Tulagi,”
Seymour sang,
“But Douglas MacArthur said no!
He said, there’s a reason, it isn’t the season,
Besides, there is no U.S.O.”
The battle-happy Seymour turned and left.
THE LOADED
landing craft chugged slowly for shore. The Unholy Four lay at anchor. We craned our necks and pushed forward for a sight of the island which lay before us. It looked like a travel poster of the vaunted Pacific paradise. Clean golden beach, miles of neatly planted swaying palms, backdropped with hills and slopes. Further inland a range of ragged mountains.
“Sure looks right pretty, cousin.”
“Yeah. Wonder if they got a band to meet us?”
As we neared the beach we caught a glimpse of a red streak dotting through the air, many miles away.
“What was that, Mac?”
“Tracers from a machine gun.” The red flash repeated.