Battle Cry (59 page)

As the rest of us pranced about on the beach, Danny, Levin and all the rest of the boys connected with Naval gunfire were transferred to a destroyer in Mele Bay to further acquaint themselves with their operation.

The grizzled Marines lifted themselves over the side of the destroyer
Vandervort.
Their week aboard the troopship made them a sharp contrast to the clean sailors in appearance. They were smelly in their stained dungarees. From them hung implements of death: carbines, ammo, assorted knives, and other tools of their trade. The sailors took a step back at the awesome sight of their bearded guests. The Marines looked vicious. At arm’s length the sailors engaged them in conversation and showed them through the ship, explaining the complicated mechanisms of gunfire that their messages from the beach would set in motion. The
Vandervort
headed for open sea for gunfire practice. The Marines paraded about the deck like conquering pirates, making no effort to hold their contempt for the Navy’s role in the operation.

As the destroyer hit the drink and opened speed, she began a slow roll. As the
Vandervort
rolled, the Marines turned from cocky to green. The awe the sailors held for the nation’s finest took a deep dip. They stood by, flabbergasted, as the wicked-looking Marines lined the rail in unison and upchucked into the ocean.

We sailed from Port Efate, an anxious division. It was the most tremendous sight I had ever seen, overpowering. Around the gray transports rode the mightiest armada of ships ever assembled. The
Mary,
proudly to the fore, was our flagship. About her, ten thousand guns of the Fifth Fleet moved steadily north, filling the horizon from one end to the other. Ships everywhere, gray merchants of death inching closer to the defensive outer crust of the Japanese Empire.

Headquarters Company filed into the officers’ wardroom for briefing. At last we could get confirmation that we were returning to Wake Island.

Sweaty, dungaree clad, we seated ourselves about the floor, scratching at the raw saltwater shaves demanded daily by Huxley. Major Wellman entered, ordered us at ease, and tacked a large map on one of the walls. We settled back.

“The smoking lamp is lit,” he said loading up his pipe. With a bayonet he pointed to the map. My heart sank. It wasn’t Wake. Instead I saw a weird-shaped island, somewhat like a seahorse. Above it, in code word: H
ELEN
. A second and larger map showed a string of islands ranging from several square yards to several miles in length. I could count nearly forty of them. Each island bore the name of a girl: S
ARAH
, N
ELLIE
, A
MY
, B
ETTY
, K
AREN
, down to the last one, C
ORA
. It was an atoll. Most of us knew little about the atolls of the Central Pacific and were puzzled by the legend on the map which indicated that Helen was merely two miles long and several hundred yards wide. What kind of an objective was that for an entire division of men?

“O.K., men,” Wellman said, “everybody comfortable?…don’t answer that.” (Laughter.) “This sexy-looking broad is known as Helen. Don’t let her size throw you. We are entering Micronesia, the Central Pacific. This island is a coral atoll. Geologists tell us that these islands were formed by depressions in the ocean. Larger islands have sunk and left these hard-shelled little coral ones above the surface.”

“Sir,” he was interrupted, “I see that this atoll is just like a circle chain. How deep is the water between the islands?”

“You can wade from island to island when the tide is in. When it is out you can cross without even getting your feet wet. From the lagoon side, that is. Now, there is a barrier reef fringing the entire atoll.” Wellman relit his pipe and laid down the bayonet. “The Japs have five thousand hand-picked troops on Helen, or Betio, as it is really called. The Micronesian atolls run in several groups—the Ellice Islands, the Gilberts, and farther north, the Marshalls. As you know, we seized the Ellice group without opposition and our next step up is the Gilberts. The Gilberts will be the springboard to the Marshalls.”

He crossed the room, stepping gingerly over several seated men, to a master map of the Pacific. “These chains of atolls stand between Hawaii and the inner Jap defenses. We can cut several thousands of miles by taking this punch right in his guts. I know you boys have all heard the good news about the Third Division hitting Bougainville. You can see that we are coming up from underneath in the Solomons and now this is a center smash in the Gilberts. This operation will put us right within striking distance of the big Jap bases: Truk, Palau, and even the Marianas. Maybe one of these days we’ll be up there ourselves.”

“How about Wake, Major?”

“I know how we all feel about Wake but the strategy appears to be to bypass it.”

“Crap.”

“Wake is relatively unimportant to us now. We all want a crack at it, but let’s get back to Helen.” Wellman went through the plan to strike through the lagoon. Logic of the lowest private asked about Bairiki or Sarah. Wellman told us we were Marines and we didn’t fight to starve them out, but to kill them. Then he informed us that an Army division would be capturing Makin at the same time we hit Betio.

“Sir, didn’t three hundred Raiders flatten Makin over a year ago?”

“Correct, Coleman’s Raid.”

“Why the hell do they need a whole division of Army to retake it?”

“Aw, fellows,” Wellman said, “they’re liable to trip over a slit trench going in. You know the answer.” (Laughter and war whoops.)

“Any broads…er…I mean natives, Major?”

“Yes, several thousand. They are Polynesians like the Maoris. They are friendly and have been British subjects for years. Missionaries are on the atoll but the chances are that we won’t see them. Anyhow, I believe Chaplain Peterson and Father McKale are preparing a booklet about the natives.” (More laughter.)

“How about mosquitoes?”

“Not of the malaria variety.”

“Phew.”

The briefing continued. Wellman related the plans for the terrific shelling the Japs were in for from the Navy and air. He didn’t discount the possibility of another Kiska, a dry run. As the meeting wore on, I began to feel as though they were overestimating the Jap strength on Betio. It seemed silly to commit an entire division to this speck of an island. From the way that Wellman spoke and the pulse of the men in the room as he described the softening-up process, I decided this was going to be a cinch. At last the Major got around to combat assignments.

“The Second Marines have been chosen as Combat Team One. They will assault Blue Beaches One, Two, and Three. In case they need help, the Eighth Marines are being used as Division reserve.” Wellman braced for what he knew was coming.

“What about us, Major?”

“Yes, sir, did the Sixth come just for the boat ride?”

Wellman threw up his hands in disgust. “We are Corps reserve. Reserve for both Betio and the army at Makin. We’ll go wherever we are needed.”

“The goddam Second gets all the breaks!”

“We wuz robbed….”

After the outburst, the remainder of the meeting was held in furious silence. We were getting a slow burn at the thought of once more being a bridesmaid. Dejected and cursing, we thought of the long hard months of training for nothing. Humiliated not only by the Marines—the Sixth was going to be reserve for a doggie outfit. We mumbled our way out of the wardroom. Easy Company was lined up to await their briefing.

“Lousy deal,” Burnside mumbled as he approached me at the rail. We lit up and scanned the hundreds of ships.

“This is a waste of the taxpayers’ money if you ask me,” L.Q. said.

“I babied that goddam TCS jeep for six months and now they tell me I got to go ashore with a TBX. Can’t take the jeep,” Danny griped.

“Crap, piss, and corruption,” drawled Speedy.

“Now the Second and Eighth will never let us live in peace. Oh sure, the Commandant is watching
this
outfit…bullcrap, little Eva.”

“What the hell did Major Wellman say the name of the atoll was?”

“I forget…Ta…something…What was it, Mac?”

“Tarawa,” I answered.

“Yeah, that was it. Tarawa.”

CHAPTER 2

THE
convoy sweltered north. The hot days topside gave way to unbearable nights in the cluttered, humid holds. We were humiliated by our assignment. We hoped that the Second Marines would have an easy time and they would shift the Sixth to an alternate landing. While doing duty in the radio room I discovered another small room that was used for storing surplus kapok lifejackets. I got permission for the squad to sleep up there and it was a wonderful change from the hellholes below that made sleep impossible. The jackets made wonderful mattresses.

The armada could proceed only as fast as the slowest ship and our course was a jagged line. One transport’s rudder stuck and lent a little excitement to the monotony. The ship circled crazily as a score of destroyers swooped in and surrounded her until she untangled herself and caught up with us. Along with cleaning our weapons over and over we memorized our assigned frequencies and codes. The new code name for the Sixth was L
INCOLN
; we were L
INCOLN
W
HITE
. For the greater part of each day my crew stayed on the huge signal deck which gave a panoramic view of the masses of ships that pointed over north. They practiced flag signals and took over watches on the blinker lamps for ship to ship contact. All radio transmission was out since it sent waves which might be picked up by the Jap submarines lurking near the convoy.

With each hour came another rumor. The latest was that the Japs had taken a powder…an hour later the story circulated that they had moved twenty thousand more men in from the Marshalls. However, up to the last moment none of us held much respect for Helen. The attitude of the convoy was almost an indifferent calm.

Then the calm turned to deadly silence as we came into feeling range of our objective. You could almost tell by the pulse of the engine and the movement of the men that Tarawa atoll was near.

We reduced speed as another convoy equal to ours in size passed us. It was the Army division heading for Makin. Dry run or not, reserve or not, each man cleaned his weapon again, made his peace with God, wrote his letter home and waited. Then a creeping tenseness and flurry of contradictory scuttlebutt began to make us all feel uneasy about the whole operation.

Advance harbingers of the convoy parked out of range of Betio’s batteries. Cruisers of the Fifth Fleet opened the shelling on the island, shaped like a sea horse and coded with the name of a woman. It was D-day minus three. Throughout the first night, bursts of orange popped on the skyline. A penciled streak of light sped into the coral rock and spent its venom on the already battered bastion. Next day came more bombers from Phoenix, Ellice, and Samoa, followed by angry little fighters from the carriers which raked the island.

Admiral Shibu and his five thousand little yellow men lay behind walls of concrete and waited angrily. Dug into solid coral behind ten-foot-thick concrete with reinforced steel walls piled with many feet of coconut logs and sandbags, they laughed as ton upon exploding ton of shells blew down the coconut trees. Their ire mounted. They waited.

Levin walked to his beloved TCS jeep, which was lashed to the deck. He inspected it for the hundredth time and sighed at the thought of having to leave it behind when he landed. He seated himself on the hatch and leaned back to catch a glimpse of the dying sun. Speedy came alongside him slowly. Levin got up to leave.

“Levin.”

“What do you want?”

“I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

“I ain’t looking for no trouble,” Levin spat.

“Levin,” Speedy continued, “since we’re going into combat and…well, what the hell, let’s shake hands and forget the crap.”

A smile lit up Levin’s homely face. “Sure, Speedy, put her there.” They clasped hands warmly.

“Er, Levin, the guys was talking it over and…well…we all felt that…well here, Levin.” He handed Levin a sheet of paper.

He squinted to read it in the fading light:
The Dit-happy Armpit Smellers of Huxley’s Whores
….

“It’s kind of a club we made up a long time ago. We sort of figure that you are a member now. All the guys signed it. You can sign my copy if you want to.”

“Jees, thanks, Speedy. Here, have a cigarette.”

We stood topside as the guns of the Fifth Fleet leveled the distant palms and split the dawn with salvo after salvo. Ear-shattering bursts and lines of shells following a red course into Betio. The rest of the troops were locked below but I had my crew in the spare room by the radio room. Hour after hour the battlewagons cracked and thundered and reeled awesomely under the impact of the explosives they were hurling into the tiny coral speck.

“Gawd,” Andy whispered, “nothing could live after this.”

“The whole island is on fire.”

“Gawd.”

“Here come the cruisers in closer.” A smashing broadside was hurled from the
Portland
and another from the
Mobile.
Little destroyers cockily moved into point-blank range with their five-inchers blazing. Flares of light belched from the guns of the warships with every salvo until the dawn became daylight.

I checked my watch as we dropped anchor in the transport area. The Second Marines awaited word from the
Maryland
whose code name was R
OCKY
.

H-Hour crept close and every ship of the fleet poured it on except the screening destroyers, which circled the transports on the alert for enemy submarines. Admiral Parks had claimed he would sink Betio. I wouldn’t have argued with him.

“Somehow,” Danny said, “I can’t help but feel sorry for those Japs. Suppose it was us?”

The punishing spectacle rose to new heights until Betio faded from view behind a shroud of rising smoke.

Then it became very quiet.