The Final Storm (32 page)

T
he truck was sliding, tilting to the right, then farther still, the men on the high side tumbling over, falling into the men whose backs were now to the ground.

“Get out! Move it!”

He saw Porter yelling the order from outside, the lieutenant standing in knee-deep mud. No one had to be told twice, the truck balanced precariously with two wheels completely buried. They bailed out as quickly as each man could move, some stumbling, backpacks and weapons hitting the mushy ground. Immediately they were engulfed by another horror, the rain and mud blanketed by a pungent stink, the smell of the earth revealing some hint of what lay hidden beneath it. Adams felt his face curling up, fighting the smell, far worse than before, others reacting as well. But he saw the lieutenant high-stepping through the mud as quickly as he could, waving his arms.

“There! That shallow dip. Get there! Now!”

The men flowed clumsily away from the trucks, Adams aware of the urgency in Porter’s order, and he saw the lieutenant staring away, down another long hillside. Even in the driving rain, Adams could see men dug in everywhere, the soft ground pockmarked by foxholes and narrow trenches. In the shallow bowl where Porter had sent them, other men were waving them on, officers certainly, anonymous in their ponchos. But the authority was there, the men who
knew something
, who were assigning Porter’s platoon and the rest of Bennett’s company to a place where they could dig their own holes. Adams felt the mud pulling at his boots, tried to keep his balance, stepped as quickly as he could. He heard a new sound now, a sharp rip in the air above him, the shell impacting off to the left, near some of the men on the far flank. The shell didn’t explode with much vigor, the blast throwing up more mud than fire, but the men close to the blast reacted as any man would, diving headlong into the miserable slop. The rumble from the artillery reached them, their pace picking up, the boots trudging as quickly as they could through the vast sea of oozing ground they had been assigned to.

“Dig in!”

Porter dropped down, obeying his own order, his walkie-talkie man cutting into the mud with the small shovel. Adams saw Welty, already
working at the soft goo at their feet, and Welty said, “Here! Come on! Dig!”

Another crack split the air, two more to one side, shells striking the hillside behind them, near the trucks. Adams ducked, useless instinct, and Ferucci was there, moving past, his own shovel in his hand.

“Dig! No cover up here! They’re looking at us, you jackass!”

Adams swung his shovel down like a pickax, but the angled blade just sank into the mud, nothing like the rugged coral they had chopped through before.

“Straighten it out! Dig!”

Welty seemed furious, and Adams felt immensely stupid, fumbled with the shovel’s head, loosening the clamp, straightening the blade, the shovel now … a shovel. He began to scoop the mud, tossing it to one side, another scoop, the slop filling the hole as quickly as he could clear it away. Welty was doing the same, manic motion, another shell coming down fifty yards in front of them, the hillside erupting into a bright flash, a wall of brown goo coming down around them. Adams felt his heart screaming in his chest, worked the shovel, gradually the hole deepening, the softer ground hardening the deeper they went. The hole began to take shape, deepening further, Welty now down inside, punching the ground with the small blade, Adams kneeling on one knee, the poncho billowing out in a gust of wind, no protection at all, the rain blowing hard into his face. There were more shells coming in, some bursting high above, flashes of fire in the dark rain. Others came down straight into the mire, throwing up more curtains of mud. Welty yelled at him, “Get down here! Help me!”

Adams dropped down, the bottom of the foxhole already filling with water, softening, easier to dig. Adams tried to find room for his own shovel, worked in rhythm with Welty, digging while Welty tossed away the dirt. The hole was almost waist deep, both men struggling, the mud seeping in, but not as quickly as they tossed it out. Adams worked as rapidly as Welty’s movements allowed, let himself be guided by the redhead’s speed, and soon the hole was more than belly deep. Deep enough.

Welty jerked at his backpack, shouted at him, “Shelter half! Try to spread it out over the hole! Come on, you know how to do this!”

Adams pulled his slab of canvas from his pack, unrolled it, felt water running down his neck and back. He did as Welty did, anchored the corners of the shelter half on either side of the hole, saw a rock lodged in the
mud, reached out, pulled it onto one corner of the canvas, searched frantically for another. But the ground had hidden anything on the surface, and he mimicked Welty, the man scooping a mound of mud onto the other corner of the shelter, the best they could do. The canvas was across the hole now, overlapping in the center, and Adams knew it wouldn’t hold, that the rain would simply flow right into the sagging center.

“We need a tent pole, anything.”

“You see any damn tent poles?”

Adams felt stupid again, glanced at his rifle, useless, too short, and he didn’t want the barrel in the mud, or filling up with water. Welty sat at one end of the rectangular hole and Adams dropped down, facing him, both men exhausted. Adams fought for his breath, tried to slide the poncho beneath him, some protection from the muddy bottom, but he was already soaked, his dungarees thick with the filthy water. Above them the shelter halves were sagging low, water pouring through in steady streams. Adams shifted his position, tried to avoid a rivulet that came down on his legs, splattering against his boots. He looked at Welty, hoped to see a smile, the man’s calm humor reassuring. But Welty had his head down, his eyes hidden by his helmet, water dripping off the brim. Adams felt a thump in the ground, knew it had to be an artillery shell. More came in now, the soft sides of the foxhole shaking, mud tumbling in around their legs. He heard voices, distant, urgent, tried to hear … who? But the words were swept away by the wind and rain, and Welty did not move.

“Did you hear that? Somebody might be hit.”

Welty raised his head, his eyes peering out toward him from beneath the helmet.

“Yep. Artillery attack. That’s what happens. We’re safer right here than anyplace out there. You crawl out there and you’ll catch hell from the looey, I promise you. Just pray for luck. We’ll be okay unless a Jap shell comes down right on top of us. If that happens … well, it won’t matter much.”

Welty seemed resigned, his strange calm returning, and Adams said, “What do we do now? I’m cold. Damn! You smell that? What stinks so bad?”

Welty looked at him with a tilt of his head.

“Don’t think about that. No telling what’s in this mud. The cold’ll get worse. What we do now is … wait. They need us to move, they’ll let us know. That’s what officers are for. The looey’s as miserable as we are.”

Adams looked at the side of the foxhole, close to his face, the mud oozing downward, the smells engulfing him. The question rolled through his brain. What’s in the mud? Oh God. Dead Japs. He wanted to ask, felt stupid again, no, keep your mouth shut. If it’s dead Japs … maybe the rain will help. God, maybe it won’t.

He shivered again, felt the water deepening beneath him. He kept his stare on the mud close to his face, thought, blood? That stink … gotta be something dead. How long we gotta sit here and just do nothing? I’d rather be up there marching, maybe shooting at somebody than just sitting here. He clamped his arms in tight, trying to push heat through them, useless, the shivering growing worse, the smells sickening, images of dead bodies. He closed his eyes, tried to think of anything else, any distraction, but the first image he couldn’t erase was the dead sniper, and then the men with the flamethrowers, roasting the enemy in their caves. God, how much worse can this get, anyway? This place … who the hell picked this place to fight over? He opened his eyes, saw mud flowing onto his legs, slowly burying him. He jerked his knees toward him, wiped at the mud with his hands, looked at it, the shivering coming from fear, a stab of nausea. Across from him, Welty pulled at his backpack, said, “How ’bout some stew?”

T
hey were on the move again, this time on foot, no truck able to navigate the deep mud of the trails, none daring to move across the open ground. Some had tried to use the primary roads, and Adams had passed by them, watching the engineers at work, bulldozers extricating mired vehicles from mud that seemed hip deep. In front of them the Japanese artillery was peppering another open hilltop, but the near side of the ridge was cut with limestone gullies, large rocks scattered about, thickets of brush. It was excellent cover, and Adams could see clearly that the river of mud led them straight toward that hillside.

There had been no briefing, no senior officer telling them where they were going, what the plan might be. The lieutenant knew more than they did, of course, whether through the walkie-talkie or word from a runner, one of the amazingly unfortunate men who had to move quickly across all kinds of open ground just to pass some command to the frontline officers. Runners were labeled the
suicide squad
, their life expectancy in battle as bad as the lieutenants who were supposed to lead their men into every assault. If the runners had one advantage, it came from a lack of a shovel.
They rarely stayed in one place long enough to worry about digging a foxhole.

The march had begun with a hard shout from Porter to move up out of the soggy protection of their foxholes. Once the men had emerged, a sea of dull green shapes, Adams had seen the lieutenant hurry away toward a huddle of other men who were sheltered by the shadow of a tank. The tank had seemed unoccupied, quiet and still, its treads half buried, but when the brief meeting had ended, two of the anonymous poncho-covered men had crawled up on the turret, and with a smoky belch the tank had come to life, churning frantically, its riders barely able to hang on. But that tank was long gone, and to Adams’s dismay, it had gone in the opposite direction from where they slogged their way now.

The flashes of artillery fire still came toward them, but there was no precision, the patterns brief, scattered. It was like before, and Adams had heard enough to know that the bigger guns were probably firing in single shots, then disappearing back into their hiding places. The shells that came down within sight were mostly ineffective, the mud and driving rain keeping the artillery from igniting any fires, the thunder from the impacts mostly muffled. But no one slowed to watch, the entire company moving up as quickly as they could into this new cover, the ravines and rocks, men spreading out, guided by more men in ponchos, no one showing a face. Adams began to climb, put one hand on a fat wet rock, pushed himself up a steep slick path. Men were closing in behind him, no one paying attention to the order to keep their distance, the five-yard rule forgotten, at least for now. The rocks were the first real cover they had seen since the trucks had pulled away, every man searching for his own bit of safety.

He glanced upward toward the crest of the hill, a mistake, rain and sweat in his eyes, a small flood washing down his neck. But he had seen men up there, faceless helmets staring down at them, dug into the rocks and thickets of brush. Close in front he saw one man pointing out to the side, a glimpse of the man’s face. Porter.

“Move out that way! Find some cover. Use your shelter halves, or dig in if you can!”

Adams slipped up close to an embankment, the ledge above jutting out over his head, sat, cradling his rifle across his knees. Others were moving close against the same rock face, sitting, some moving farther on, dragged by someone else’s order. He saw Welty moving down into a low place in the rocks, heard a shout coming up from the crevice.

“Find your own damn hole!”

Adams knew the voice, Yablonski, and Adams watched as Welty backed away, stared into the low place with a look that spoke of pure exhaustion, and no patience at all. Adams called out, “Over here! Good spot!”

Welty seemed to hesitate, and Adams started to call again, but a shock jolted him, rocks showering down, a deafening blast that raised him off the ground. He stared toward Welty with wide-eyed horror, crawled out toward him, the smoke clearing quickly, driven away by the rain. He saw Welty still standing, staring back at him. Others were calling out now, Ferucci, “Get your ass down!”

Welty staggered forward, seemed to see Adams for the first time, scampered quickly now, dropped down hard against the rock face. Adams grabbed him, said, “You okay? God, I thought you were blown to hell!”

Welty nodded furiously.

“Me too.” He held up both his arms, seemed to do an examination, flexed his fingers, slapped both his legs, put one hand on his crotch. “Son of a bitch. They missed me.”

“Not by much! Good God, that shell hit right above you!”

“Yeah. I heard it. Guess this was my lucky day.”

Porter was there now, wet and furious.

“Shut up! I need ten men! Where’s Ferucci?”

“Here!”

“Gather up your squad. Bennett’s up above us, needs a little firepower to go along. Where’s a BAR?”

“Here!”

Gridley rose up from Yablonski’s hole, Gorman beside him, and Adams could see the tension in Porter’s face, a manic flow of words.

“Good. Ferucci, get your men together, and follow me up that path to the right. Bennett’s up there. No talking, keep your damn heads down. The Japs know we’re here. The First has had boys up here for two days, and they’re pulling out, leaving this hill to us. But the Japs only know that we’ve got people all over this place, and they’re not happy about it. We’re watching them just like they’re watching us. First man in this platoon gets his brains blown out gets a kick in the ass.”

Adams saw no hint of a smile from Porter, the odd joke nonsensical, spoken by a man who was anxious, as nervous as Adams had ever seen him.
Afraid
. Porter watched as the men moved closer, said, “Ballard! Your squad
hold back, give us fifty yards, then follow. Mortensen! Follow Ballard. Fifty yards. Got it?”