Authors: Homer Hickam
“The American fleet,” Lieutenant Soichi advised. “Aboard those ships are many rough, angry men. Admiral Shibasaki has laid down a challenge to them. He says a million Americans could not take Tarawa in ten thousand years. I think it will take considerably less. They will be landing very soon.” He inclined his head in her direction. “Why don't you go with me, Sister? I think there's a chance we could even make it to the next island. The crossing is shallow.”
She could not take her eyes off the ships, wondering about the men aboard them, imagining them looking back at the atoll, and what they might be thinking. Were they frightened? Or perhaps they were eager for a day of fighting. The only Americans she had ever been near were rich yachtsmen who had pulled into the harbor near the convent on Ruka. Of course, she had not been allowed to talk to them. Only the older nuns and the priests had enjoyed their fellowship. Her impression of them, based on brief observations, was that they were a bit loud, and their women a bit aloof.
“Sister? Did you hear me?” Soichi asked.
“Aye, Lieutenant, I heard ye, but surely ye know I cannot abandon me fella boys.”
Soichi sucked between his teeth. “You don't understand, Sister. The
rikusentai,
haven't you noticed their preparations? They can hardly wait to die. This battle is going to be a bloody nightmare. I beg you to escape it. Come with me.”
Her smile was grateful but her answer firm. “No, Lieutenant. I cannot. If I die here, then God's will be done. Me fella boys and I have come far together, and together we will stay.”
He nodded. “I understand. You are loyal. It is a fine thing to be loyal.”
“Dear lieutenant,” Sister Mary Kathleen said, “how was it you came to this terrible place?”
His answer was bitter. “My father thought it best if I joined the militarists. It was a business decision, you see. We import and export a variety of goods and require many government permissions. So, despite my most excellent American education, I entered the navy and was sent here to this awful place. I do
so
hope this pleases my honorable father! And you, Sister? How did you come to be here? It has never been clear to me.”
“I suppose ye might say it began when I took me vows in Ireland,” was her wistful answer. “ âTis a long story.”
“Then I regret I shan't stay to hear it,” Lieutenant Soichi replied cordially. He led her down to the base of the embankment, then waited while she shook the sand from her habit.
Although there was little doubt he was ready to leave, and quickly, Soichi tarried long enough to give her some final advice. “Stay in the fortress, Sister. I designed it well. It will survive the bombardment, although your ears will surely ring from all the noise. When the invasion comes, find a dark corner, you and your Polynesians. Crouch down and keep yourselves quiet. From their talk, I fear some of the
rikusentai
may decide to vent their frustrations on you. Never look them in the eye, that's my counsel. To them, it is a sign of aggression to which they must respond. Be meek and humble and perhaps you will get by”
She put out her hand to him. “Meek and humble. âTis the nun's stockin-trade, Lieutenant! Thank ye for looking after us so far.”
“Sister, my countrymen are all going to die. Pray for them, if you will. They are brave men who think they are doing the right thing.”
“Yes, all right, Lieutenant,” she answered. “God go with ye now.”
“We'll find out if He's with me soon enough, Sister,” Soichi answered, then bowed to her, put his hand on top of his helmet, and ran like a rabbit. Sister Mary Kathleen watched him go, watched him pick his way through a scruffy bramble of wilted sea grapes and then pause before making a run across an open field. He was heading for another long barrier of sand, and he almost made it. Halfway across the field, there came from overhead a horrible screeching noise, and Lieutenant Soichi froze, then looked up as if God had called him to show his face to heaven. That was the last time Sister Mary Kathleen, or anyone, ever saw him. The hideous screech ended in a vast, terrible roar of orange fire, molten steel, and flying sand.
Lieutenant Soichi, Sister Mary Kathleen's only Japanese friend on the atolls of Tarawa, was gone forever, vaporized by a huge American naval artillery round that otherwise dug a shallow crater in not much of anything. She looked resentfully toward the sky, then angrily crossed herself. “Saint Monessa!” she called. “Fly to God, my dear sweet child. Beg for me. Ye are my only chance!”
As if in reply, angels in heaven shrieked back their hatred of her. Shaken, it took a moment before she realized it was not a snarling heavenly host but screaming death hurtling anew from the sea. Sister Mary Kathleen cast an-other pleading look at the sky, then put her head down and ran for her life.
Booms and shrieks shattered the morning tropical mist, and black smoke rings from gray naval guns floated prettily across the crystalline blue, lagoon. Distant thumps and pale yellow smoke boiling aloft announced the multiple hammer blows falling from the sky to batter the tiny atoll. Aboard the troopship
J. Wesley Clayton,
a big, wide-shouldered man wearing navy khakis and a Coast Guard officer's cap watched and marveled as more naval artillery pierced the moisture-laden air. The cascading thunder of the outgoing rounds was leavened by the clanking of gears and the high-pitched, energetic shriek of pneumatics turning the big guns. The United States Navy had been busy all morning, showing her marines how she could pummel a tiny island into submission. It was a fiery demonstration of the power of the great American fleet off the atolls known as Tarawa and one in particular, called Betio.
The Coast Guard officer marveling at the amazing bombardment was Captain Josh Thurlow. A legend of the Pacific war, though officially not part of it, he had the square-jawed look appropriate to seafarers, a face deeply tanned and properly weathered by the wind and waves, and a stout build and muscular legs adapted to a rolling deck. There was also a livid scar on his chin, a result, so the story went, of a confrontation with a polar bear when he was but a young officer on the old Bering Sea Patrol. At the present, however, as Josh stood on the troopship before the beaches of Tarawa, his rugged face reflected not past adventures but major unhappiness, and not a little worry for the day's endeavor.
Josh had observed the mighty barrage of the navy, smelled the wafting stink of the expended gunpowder, and reached the first of several unsettling conclusions, which he felt compelled to voice to the pug-faced little Marine
Corps colonel who stood beside him. “The navy's too close, Montague,” he announced. “They need to back off, and you marines would be wise to shift your beaches away from that dodging tide, too, or wait another day”
The puggy little colonel was none other than Colonel Montague Singleton “Monkey” Burr, who was also something of a legend, though, as his troops gossiped, mostly in his own mind. “What a crybaby you are, Thurlow,” he chided. “Today's
the
day, that island is
the
island, and we're going ashore, hell, high water, or dodging tides, whatever the hell that may be.”
“We, Montague?” Josh asked mildly, even though he knew it would make steam blow out of Burr's ears.
“Damn you to hell, Thurlow!” the colonel snapped, confirming Josh's expectation. “I don't like being a staff officer, you know I don't, but,” he sneered, “at least I ain't Frank Knox's tattletale.”
Josh didn't reply, mainly because Burr had him dead to rights. He was in the Pacific courtesy of the secretary of the navy, and he had no portfolio save as an observer. Of course, that hadn't kept him from fighting on Guadalcanal, or going up the Slot with Jack Kennedy to chase after President Roosevelt's cousin who, some said, had deserted and gone over to the Japanese. But now, here he was, only an observer again.
It was November 1943, and the United States Navy was beginning her grand strategy of throwing her marines at island after bloody island across the Pacific. If all went well, so the admirals believed, the triumphant leathernecks would ultimately stand in the emperor's palace in Tokyo as they'd once stood in Montezuma's great hall with Old Glory fluttering on its highest rampart. The United States Army, meaning General Douglas MacArthur, believed the navy's strategy to be mad. It required light infantry to go up against deter-mined, even fanatical defenders who loved concrete, big guns, carefully prepared fields of fire, land and sea mines, snipers, and human wave attacks compressed onto tiny battlefields from which there was no escape save death. The little atoll in front of Josh and Colonel Burr was the first island chosen for this great strategic sweep across the Pacific. On this rock, the Marine Corps was determined to build its New Church of Amphibious Assault. It would do it without the United States We-Grind-Slowly-but-We-Fucking-Grind Army, too.
During a lull in the bombardment, Burr began to lecture Josh and anyone else within the range of his voice, which meant most of the ship, even down in the boiler room, about his beloved marines. “War may be the Corps's vocation, Thurlow,” he roared, “but glory is our real work. The navy knows that and is pleased to allow us marines to occasionally wade in
glorious blood, though it ain't pretty to them in their crisp whites and polished decks. We will be victorious this day, make no mistake, and the harder the enemy fights, I say, all the better. Through hardship comes experience and knowledge. Through adversity comes strength and greatness. Through privation comes triumph and glory!”
“Glory, Montague?” Josh replied, maintaining his mild tone. “Do you really think these young gents about to go ashore are as fond of glory as you and the other professionals of the Corps?”
Burr stared at the wounded atoll, which seemed adrift in smoke and flame. “Now listen to me carefully, Thurlow,” he said in a low growl. “I followed you out here to tell you to keep your yap shut. I won't have you infecting these marines with your defeatist nonsense. You ain't part of this operation. Don't forget that.”
Before Josh could reply, the dawn was again shattered, this time by the battleship USS
Maryland,
old, obsolete, bombed and sunk at Pearl Harbor, but by God afloat again to fight another day. In a gigantic broadside, the warship erupted with a bone-rattling display of her power. A mighty spew of plumed orange and white smoke flew away from her, and the sky seemed to fall apart like a window struck by a flying brick. Then Betio seemed to be gripped by an earthquake as the shells struck, the atoll trembling beneath a storm of dust and sand.
“Oh, God love you, old girl,” Burr admired, beaming in rapture at the resurrected vessel. “Pound âem into dust, my darling!”
Standing around the bridge high above the deck, the
J. Wesley Claytons
duty officers were cheering, goading the huge shells to fly straight and true. But straight was the problem, in Josh's view. “You know your artillery theory, Montague,” he persisted. “Those shells are on a flat trajectory. They're throwing up sand, I'll warrant, but they're not digging Jap out of his hidey-holes. If the navy would back off and raise their tubes, the shells would come down at a steeper angle and penetrate the sand before exploding. I think Jap's just hunkered down right now behind and beneath all that sand, waiting us out.”
Contradicting Josh, there was a sudden explosion on the island, sending a massive shock wave flying across the water, so thick that Josh and Burr could feel the pressure on their faces. Burr laughed out loud. “As per usual, you're wrong, Thurlow!”
Josh caught a whiff of the acid stink of exploded gunpowder, the odor conjuring up the terrible battles he'd fought over the years against his country's various enemies. “There's still that dodging tide,” he remarked stubbornly.
“What in God's fucking underpants is a dodging tide? You keep repeating that damnable phrase!”
Josh was always a patient teacher of the sea, especially with marines who thought the ocean but a nuisance across which they had to endure in order to get at the throats of the enemy. “There's spring tides, neap tides, and dodges,” he explained. “It all has to do with the sun and the moon and where they are to one another. When both of them big fellows line up and start pulling in tandem, you've got a dodging tide, and, as bad luck would have it, Montague, that's what you've got on that atoll before us right now. That means this very minute the tide's going out, way out, and the reefs are rising. Soon they'll be as dry as your Aunt Sally's picket fence, and your boys will have to get over them.”
Burr spat a brown stream of tobacco juice over the side. His temper was not helped when a good portion of it blew back in his face. He used the sleeve of his crisp new camouflage utilities to wipe his face, then spat again for good measure, this time with the wind. “Again, you're wrong. We'll get over the reef with our amtracs and then we'll dig out the few Japs left alive after this barrage and we'll kill them, see, and bury them. All in a morning's work.”
Josh knew he was wasting his breath, had known it all along. A kind of desperation had made him voice his fears even though he knew Burr was too low on the totem pole to do anything about them. Josh had seen it happen before, a kind of momentum that took hold during the planning of an operation that buried errors in judgment beneath wishful thinking. Since Guadalcanal, it was the belief of every navy and Marine Corps staff officer that their marines could overcome any obstacle, including poor tactics. But Josh loved his history and knew Napoleon at Waterloo and Lee at Gettysburg had also come to believe their men could do anything, even charge up a hill into the teeth of cannon. Defeat served up on a cold plate was what those great generals had received, and now Josh feared these islands called Tarawa, and especially this atoll called Betio, were the next cold serving of error, this time for General Holland M. “Howling Mad” Smith and his cocky leathernecks. They were about to launch themselves onto a hot, sandy beach where a determined enemy waited, no matter how many flat, skipping rounds were thrown at him courtesy of the United States blue-water, pleated-pants, brown-shoe Navy.