Conquest ~ Indian Hill 3 ~ A Michael Talbot Adventure (55 page)

And that was even before the Americans had started to turn the tides of the war and go on the offensive. Vern was in no rush to see what a desperate Japanese soldier was capable of.

“Nothing can survive that, right?” Killinger asked as another barrage
l
it up the night sky.

“
We’ll find out tomorrow
,” Vern said
,
finishing another cigarette. He could swear that he saw his friend shake with tremors
,
but it could have been the vibrations of a new volley. “You should get some sleep
,” Vern told
him
.

“You gonna hit the rack?”

“Yeah,
I’ll be there soon
,
”
h
e lied. Vern
stayed there long enough to
watch the sun come up and still the bombs arced
over him.
“What’s left to destroy
?” he asked
himself
,
looking through a pair of field binoculars. And then
there was blissful, peaceful, terrifying quiet. Because the quiet
now
meant that men, flesh and blood men
,
would be getting into their troop transports and heading to that desolate
black lump of coagulated lava. Vern could not discern the importance of the target other than to tell the Japanese
,
‘Hey
,
we’re coming, this one’s for the Arizona!’

Vern shuffled into
one of
the
first
troop transport
s
.
T
hey were stuffe
d in so tight he could not even check to make sure that his rifle was packed correctly in the plastic to keep the sea water out of its inner workings. He nodded to Killinger who was among one of the last into the small boat. Vern figured he would hook up with his friend
once they got ashore.
None of the men spoke as the boats traveled across the choppy water, the drone of multiple motors masked some of the vomiting as scared old boys
and
, young men
prepared for battle.
No
thing could have prepared those doomed souls for the next few minutes as they heade
d ashore.
Heavy machine
gun fire laced with tracers blew through the ranks of the men as the transporters opened
their
heavy metal doors. Marines were blown apart as
rounds
usually reserved for armored vehicles ripped through them.

Vern watched as death advanced row upon row o
ver
his fellow Marines. He quickly scrambled up the side of boat and plunged into
the waters. Bullets tore through the water leaving white trails as they
passed
by. The clear water
quickly became cloudy with the blood of his fellow warriors.

More and more of the Marines in the boat had followed Vern’s lead and were plunging into the water to escape the projectiles only to be dragged to their deaths in the water as the
their
heavy gear weighed them down. Vern shrugged his pack off as quickly as he could
,
trying to gain buoyancy
.
H
e had always been a strong swimmer
,
but even he was having great difficulty treading water in combat boots.

Men screamed for their mother
s as Japanese lead answered instead. Vern had finally rid himself of enough gear, to come up and get his first breath of air in nearly a minute. Dead bodies floated all around him like a macabre game
of bobbing for apples. He made sure to stay away from the transports boats that were garnering the lion’s share of rounds. He made his way to shore as quickly as he could without attracting any fire from the opposition.

He was finally able to pull himself up against a small outcropping of rock in about a foot of water but
it
shielded him completely from the Japanese entrenchment. Boat after boat was getting hammered until some
much needed air support came in and start
ed
fir
ing
directly on the Japanese. Within a few more minutes his secluded spot on the beach was actually becoming the beachhead.

“Someone’s going to pay for this
!”
a
n eager
c
orporal said to the burgeoning crowd.

Vern knew the words for what they were
;
bravado
,
trying to cover over abject fear.
He saw nothing wrong with whatever would get any of them through the day
,
though. It was ten minutes later wh
en a gunnery s
ergeant finally made it to shore that the Marines could go on the offensive again.

“We stay here like cowards
or
w
e go out there like heroes!”
t
he gunney
shouted.

Vern was scared to his core
at
the thought of dying, but to live without honor was
worse
.
The gunney
’s words had
struck a chord, inch by blood
-
soaked inch
,
those Marines had taken the beach from the Japanese. It was late into that first night when the last of the machinegun nests w
ere
silenced. The ensuing quiet had been
damn near blissful until Vern began to think of Killinger. He was certain his friend had fallen in those first few moments
,
but he spent a good amount of time going from encampment to encampment
,
hoping to come across his buddy. All he saw
was ghost images
overlaid
on vacant faces. None of them would ever be the same after th
at
day, some would deal with it better than others, but all would
remember it
.

***

“It was that second day that I got wounded. Got a Purple Heart and discharged from the service
,”
Vern continued.

“Wow
,” I said
,
mesmerized. Vern’s recounting of the story had been so visceral, so authentic
,
I
swore
I could smell the smoke from the spent shells.

“How’d you get injured?” Brian asked, hefting Vern up as we continued forward.

“Well,
you know the Japanese had dug themselves deep into that rock. That was why our shells didn’t do as much damage as we thought they
would. Damn
,
they were as much as twenty to thirty feet underground, probably playing cards and
drinking
s
aki while we dropped bombs all over them. So as soon as the shelling stopped
,
they knew what was coming, they grabbed all their gear and they made our landing a vision of hell on earth.”

“I don’t think I could have done it
,” I told
him in all honesty.

“Oh
,
I think you could have
,” he said
,
giving me a wink. “I know who you are.”

“This sounds much like our
r
ebellion
,”
Dee added. He had been listening as intently as any of us.

Vern craned his neck to look up. “Well
,
um.”

“Continue, worthy hu-man
,” Dee said
.

“That’s a compliment
,” I told
Vern.

“So that next day, after not sleeping again, I knew I wasn’t going to find my friend.”

“My brother
,”
Gloria added.

“I went to Jack’s house
, Gloria's brother,
when I got out, just to tell his parents that Jack had died honorably. But that’s not what they wanted to hear, it does not matter in which way you die
,
they are all a finality. They
wanted to know how he had lived so
I spent three days with Jack’s family
.
H
e had two younger sisters and a younger brother not much older than that little squirt up there
.
”
H
e
pointed
to the boy on Dee’s shoulders.

“My sister Connie was very smitten with him
,” Gloria said
,
rubbing Vern’s shoulder. “She didn’t talk to me for almost a year after we got married. It was among some of the most peaceful moments in my life.” Gloria laughed, as did Vern.

I could tell it was an old inside joke amongst them and they enjoyed it immensely.

“I wanted to be around the man who had been with my brother
,” Gloria said
with a faraway look in her eyes.

“And she helped me to heal both physically and mentally, maybe even
spiritually
,”
Vern added that last part and looked at us all quickly to see if we were going to judge him for potentially having feelings.

He was barking up the wrong tree if he thought I
was going to give him any grief.
I struggle with my feelings between each heartbeat.

When he was content that nobody was going to call him out on it he continued his narrative.

“The goal that day
had been
to complet
ely
cross the island
.
I
t was only three miles across
—
how fucking bad could it be?”

“Vern
,
there’s children and you know I don’t appreciate that language.”

Vern shrugged.

“Good thing she’s not around me much
,”
I whispered in his ear
,
conspiratorially.

Vern grunted a laugh, I could tell the old timer was hurting
,
but he was soldiering on.

“We were about a half hour in
.
M
y job was to keep an eye on the men with
the flamethrowers. It was the only weapon effective in getting the Japanese out of their holes or kill them where they lay. The problem was that nobody was watching my back. We had just passed a hole I didn’t think a skinny badger would be able to fit in, so I told the flamethrower to keep going forward. This goo
—
”

“Vern!” Gloria chided.

“So this Japanese fella wriggled himself out and stuck his bayonet straight through the back of my knee. I wish
ed
he had just shot me the pain was so intense. The Marine on the other side of the flamethrower saw what was happening and was able to kill the soldier before he was able to pull that bayonet free and finish the job.”

I was cringing at the pain he must have been in.

“
The
y
stuck me on a stretcher with that damn rifle still sticking out of my knee, nobody wanted to touch it. Every jos
tle was worse than the previous.
I thought I was going to go insane with the pain. It was when I finally got back to the beach that a
s
ergeant there plunged a
morphine shot into my arm.

“What are you idiots stupid or something?
T
he sergeant had yelled at the men for not having given it to me earlier.” Vern laughed.
“I would have kissed him
if I didn’t think the other guys would have thought me fruity or something. Even then I think I would have done it if I could have gotten up. So they
put me back on one of those God-
forsaken transport boats and shipped me over to the medical ship. I was mostly unconscious, but I remember one of the doctors saying what a fine souvenir I had brought back with me. I didn’t see it that way
.
W
hen I finally awoke from the surgery
,
I gave it to the doc
tor that had taken it out of me.
H
e couldn’t have been more pleased and I never wanted to see the damn thing again anyway.
”

“That’s a hell of a story
,
Vern
,” I told
him.

“Not near as exciting as yours
,
so I heard
,” he said
,
limping along.

“If we have enough time
,
maybe I’ll tell you
,” I told
him.