They got there three days later. They must have sailed past the battle between the American and Japanese carrier forces, but not a sign of it remained. The ocean kept its own secrets, kept them and buried them deep.
As the troopships approached the north coast of Oahu, the battlewagons and cruisers and destroyers that had accompanied and escorted the U.S. carriers were giving the landing beaches hell. The boom of the big guns echoed across the water. When the shells roared in, they rearranged the landscape pretty drastically.
Les watched with enthusiastic approval. “The more they knock the snot out of the Japs, the easier the time we’ll have,” he said.
Dive bombers took off from the carriers and pummeled what Les presumed to be Japanese positions, too. Their bombs kicked up even more dust and dirt than all that high-caliber artillery. It was, more and more, an aviator’s world. What does that make me? Les wondered when the thought occurred to him. A minute later, he shrugged. It makes me necessary, that’s what. They can blow Hawaii to kingdom come, but I’m the poor, sorry son of a bitch who lands there with a bayonet on the end of his rifle and takes it away from the Japs. Boy, am I lucky!
He couldn’t even blame his draft board, not when he, like every other Marine, had volunteered. The Army was the place for draftees, and welcome to them.
In spite of everything U.S. aircraft had done to the island, a few Japanese planes did get off the ground and attacked the fleet. The Hellcats and Wildcats overhead went after them like dogs after marauding wolves, but they made hits, too: here a cruiser, there a troopship. When flames and smoke burst from that other ship full of Marines or dogfaces, Les swore horribly: those were his countrymen getting hurt.
Here and there along the beach, Japanese field guns fired at the fleet. Shells splashed into the water around the warships. They returned fire. The Japs might have been wiser to stay quiet. When they drew notice to themselves, bigger U.S. guns did their damnedest to smash them flat.
Somehow, Dutch looked away from the astonishing spectacle ahead. He nudged Les. “Here come the LVIs.”
That made Les glance back over his shoulder, too. Sure enough, the landing craft-Landing Vehicles, Infantry, in official alphabetese-were coming alongside the Valdosta Liberty, as they were alongside the rest of the troopships, including the one that was on fire. Maybe that was a way to get the men off as fast as possible. Maybe it was more on the order of routine gone mad.
Whatever it was, Les didn’t have time to worry about it. He nodded to the men with whom he’d be going into battle: mostly kids not old enough to vote, some of them hardly old enough to shave, leavened by a sprinkling of the old breed, veterans like himself. He’d been wondering what to tell them when the moment finally came. Now it was here. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said. “Just like the book, and everything’ll be jake. Right?”
Their helmeted heads bobbed up and down. Despite the most realistic training the Corps could give, most of them had no idea what being under fire was like. Their big eyes, tight lips, and somber faces said their imaginations were working overtime. Les remembered how scared he’d been when he got up to the line in France. He soon discovered everybody else was just as scared, including the Germans.
Were the Japs on the beach-and there were bound to be Japs on the beach-scared, too? They were supposed to make the Hun look like a Sunday-school teacher. Could they be scared? Les hoped so, but he wouldn’t have bet anything above a dime on it.
“My company!” Captain Bradford shouted. “Take to the boats!”
Marines climbed over the rail and scrambled down nets stretched over the side of the Valdosta Liberty. Men had been moving from ships to boats like that as long as there’d been ships and boats. As far as Les was concerned, there had to be a better way. You could get smashed between ship and boat, you could fall into the water and drown, or you could fall into the boat and break your ankle. None of those helped the country one goddamn bit.
A couple of men already in the LVI steadied Dillon as he swung down from the net into the landing craft.
“We got you, Sarge,” one of them said.
“Thanks,” Les told him-he was a long way from too proud to be glad for the help. As soon as his own feet were steady on the steel deck plates, he reached up to help other descending Marines. They got everybody into the LVI without seeing anyone hurt. Les hoped that was a good omen. He also knew damn well the record wouldn’t last once they hit the beach.
Diesel engine belching and farting, the LVI pulled away from the troopship. Another one chugged up to take its place. Along with countless more, it wallowed towards Oahu. Les couldn’t see out; the sides of the boat were too high. All he could see besides those steel walls were other Marines in green dungarees and jackets and camouflage helmet covers like his-and, for variety, the sailors running the LVI, who wore helmets painted battleship gray along with blue dungarees and shirts.
Even if he couldn’t see out, he knew when the landing craft got close to shore. The American naval barrage fell silent, to keep short rounds from coming down on the LVIs. As soon as the warships’ guns ceased fire, the Japs on shore opened up with everything they had. They’d kept a lot of their weapons quiet after all. Shells and mortar bombs started splashing down among the oncoming boats.
One burst close to Les’ LVI. Fragments clattered off the boat’s side, but none got through. “Thank you, Jesus,” said a Marine behind the sergeant. Les found himself nodding. He’d never been a churchgoing man, but he wouldn’t turn down anything he could get right now.
Every now and then, enemy rounds didn’t come down among the American landing craft but on one or another of them. Then it wasn’t splash-blam! but clang-blam! Les winced every time he heard that, the way he would have winced at hearing a drill in a dentist’s office. And the drill might be for him next, depending on what the dentist had to say. And one of those clang-blam!s might be for him next, too, depending on Lord only knew what.
“Come on, goddammit. Get to the beach, goddammit,” somebody was saying, over and over again. After a bit, Les realized the words were coming out of his own mouth. He wasn’t saying anything everybody else wasn’t thinking.
The LVI’s bottom grated on sand. It rumbled forward anyway. It wasn’t so amphibious as an amtrac, one of the tractors really designed to work on both land and water, but it could get around a bit when out of its proper element. A couple of swabbies undogged the loading gate. It kicked up a splash when it fell open; the LVI hadn’t quite made it to the tide line.
“Out! Out! Out!” Captain Bradford screamed. “Spread out and get off the beach as fast as you can! Move!”
Marines poured from the landing craft. Mortar rounds were bursting on the beach, too, throwing up plumes of golden sand. Machine guns stuttered out death from the undergrowth not nearly far enough away. Japanese tracers were blue-white, not red like their American counterparts. Bullets from those machine guns and enemy rifles kicked up sand spurts, too.
Men went down. Some of them and their buddies shouted, “Doc! Hey, Doc!” for the Navy corpsmen who served the Marines. Others lay where they had fallen. No medic would help a man blown to hamburger by a mortar bomb. Neither would anything else, not till Judgment Day.
Les charged past a Japanese soldier sprawled on the ground all bloody with his long-bayoneted rifle beside him. He thought the man was dead-till a shot rang out behind him. He whirled. The round had come from an American rifle. A Marine said, “The son of a bitch was playing possum. I saw him grab for his piece, and I let him have it.”