Battle Cry (76 page)

“Doc, the shelling is starting up again.”

“Come on, you people, move out, easy with those litters. Hurry and prep that Swede kid, they’ll probably be bringing more in.”

Outside the tent there was a wild shouting and ruckus. “Come quick, Doc. Someone’s gone loco!”

Kyser rushed outside. Three corpsman clutched the struggling Shining Lighttower. “I’m not leaving! I’m not leaving my buddies!” He kicked and squirmed furiously to break the grip.

“What’s the matter with him?” Kyser asked.

“He’s stone deaf. Bilateral rupture—both eardrums, from the shellfire.”

“Give him a shot of morphine and get him quieted down. If he gives you any more trouble put him in a straight jacket. Get him out of here as soon as you can.”

Lighttower broke loose from his tormentors and threw his arms about the doctor. “Don’t let them take me away!” A needle plunged into him from behind and the corpsman dragged him loose. Kyser wavered faintly a moment, gripped a canvas flap, steadied himself, and returned to the tent.

Andy was on the table. Doc Kyser reached for his sterile gloves. At the same moment from the other section of the tent he heard a familiar call. “Corpsman, man here in bad shape.” The stretcher bearing the body of Danny Forrester was lowered to the deck.

Kathy opened the door of the refrigerator and reached for the bottle of cold water. A shadow fell over the kitchen. She turned with a start.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you, dear,” her mother said. “I saw the light on.” Sybil Walker tied her robe, reached across the table and picked up the small bottle of pills. “How long have you been taking these?”

“I…I saw the doctor a few weeks ago. He said it would be all right….”

“Kathleen, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you, Mother.”

Kathy stared out the window into the black night. “They’ve landed again. I know when he lands….”

“You’re just imagining, dear.”

“No, I know, Mother.”

Sybil came up behind her daughter and placed a hand on her shoulder. The girl fell into her mother’s arms. “I’ve tried to be brave,” she sobbed.

“There, there, baby,” mother soothed.

“If Danny dies, I don’t want to live.”

“Hush, now, hush. Let’s sit down and talk, dear.”

“I don’t usually let myself get like this,” she said as she dried her eyes. “But when I know he’s going in…I…get afraid. I dream I see him, all covered with blood…trying to reach out to me….”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We promised…we’d see it through together.”

“Don’t you know we love you, that we worry every minute of every day with you? Come on now, how about a nice hot cup of cocoa?”

“That sounds good.”

“Feel better, dear?”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you’d like, I’ll sleep in with you.”

“Would you—please, Mother?”

CHAPTER 4

THERE
would be no repetition this time of the miracle that saved the Marines from a counterattack at Tarawa. The Japs were staging at Garapan, bent on overrunning the artillery-riddled troops on Red Beach One.

The remains of the Second Battalion of the Sixth Marines threw up a picket line facing Garapan up the coast. Fox Company was strung out in the brush, behind rocks, straddling the road and running down to the water’s edge; it was a slim line, cut deeply by first-day casualties. At dusk the grim horror-filled curtain of dark slowly fell as Shapiro’s Foxes, Whistler’s Easy Company, How, and Captain Harper’s George gritted their teeth and made quick peace with God and waited. Shapiro by understanding and unanimous will took charge of the entire four companies and worked busily over his positions, bucking up the courage of his men.

McQuade and his patrol filtered back and reported to the Captain.

“What’s the scoop, McQuade?” Shapiro greeted him.

McQuade sat down and drew a breath and wiped the sweat from his face. “Max, I’m getting too damned old for those patrols, I’m getting a survey after tonight. We’re up the creek without a paddle, Max. We got halfway to Garapan, sticking close to the road. The Japs are staging for a pisscutter. We spotted four tanks and maybe two or three thousand of them. They got bugles, flags, samurais, and flushing toilets ready to throw at us.” The sergeant scanned the spread of the battalion and shook his head. “I don’t see how the hell we’re going to hold them. Regiment better get at least another battalion up here.”

“I got news for you, McQuade. We are isolated,” Shapiro said.

The sergeant tried to act nonchalant. “Gimme a weed.”

Shapiro went to the field phone and got Major Marlin, now the battalion commander, at the other end of the line. “Marlin, this is Max. My patrol just reported in. King-sized banzai coming…two to three thousand massing with tank support. Can you give us anything?”

“That’s great,” Marlin sputtered at the command post phone. “Can you use slingshots? Max, you’re next in command now. If I’m dead tomorrow I hope you have enough men left for a four-handed poker game.”

“It’s that bad, huh?”

“It’s worse than the first night at Tarawa, Max. Worst in the Corps history. I’ll get walking wounded and every gun and bullet we have up there. I’ll do the best I can. We are trying to get help from the Navy but I hear that the Jap fleet is coming in.”

As the moon rose, Max Shapiro called his officers and staff NCOs about him. The harrowing minutes ticked by slowly for the men on the line, their hands clutching their bayoneted rifles and their eyes glued down the coastal road.

Max knelt inside the circle of men about him. “I’m not going to give you people a big Semper Fi talk. We either stop this attack or die. No Marine retreats. If he does, shoot him. Any questions?”

They nodded grimly and returned to their posts. Shapiro then did a very unusual thing. He spread his poncho on the deck and lay down with his helmet as a pillow.

“What the hell are you doing, Max?” McQuade asked.

“What the hell you think I’m doing? I’m going to take a nap. Wake me up when the fun starts.”

A wave of laughter spread along the line as the men turned to catch the little skipper feigning sleep. He did a masterful job of acting. It was like a tonic to the tired men.

The Japanese bugles blew. A hundred samurai swords glinted through the moonlight. Down the road the frenzy-whipped enemy charged at Huxley’s Whores.

Actually, the Japs were caught in a trap. In the cover of dark they had massed their men in a wedge to overrun Red Beach One. Two Navy destroyers standing offshore shot up a thousand flares and the night turned into a blaring day. The onrushing enemy was caught, lit up, and exposed. The destroyers moved almost on the beach, pumping salvo after salvo into the packed troops at almost point-blank range. Under the calm leadership of Shapiro, who wandered up and down the lines, the Marines directed fire when the Japs were nearly atop their positions. By flare light the enemy was cut down and stacked up like cordwood, and the coastal road soon became littered with a thousand Japs. The attackers fell back, stumbling and reeling over the bodies of their dead in broken retreat. From behind the battalion, a trio of Sherman tanks roared after the enemy tanks and smashed them.

Max Shapiro resumed his nap.

At the break of daylight they came on again. The Japanese command determined to break through the cut-off men on Red Beach One and they had five thousand troops to sacrifice. This time they were sent in in waves to avoid the destroyer fire. A fusillade of death poured from the Marines but that and the cold steel of their bayonets could not stop the enemy. They swarmed into the lines. Fanatic yellow men and fanatic white men locked in hand to hand combat.

The first wave of the battering ram had succeeded in its mission, a breach had been made, and the Second Battalion buckled back over fifty yards of blood-drenched ground. The second wave of Japanese came on to exploit the break. The situation seemed desperate.

As the stunned Marines braced for the death they knew must come, Two Gun Shapiro stepped in front of them, his two pistols smoking. He turned to his Marines and over the din they heard a grisly shriek from his lips. “Blood!” he cried.

Max Shapiro sank to his knees, his pistols empty. He threw them at the enemy.
“Blood!”
he screamed.
“Blood!”

The men of Huxley’s Whores were petrified. A legend was broken! The invincible captain, the man bullets could not touch, the man they believed was almost divine, lay there writhing in agony the same as any human being. The blood gushed from his mouth and ears and nose and he rolled over defiantly, trying to crawl to his enemy to kill with bare hands, the same ghastly word on his lips.

Was he human after all? Did he not realize that something must be done to elevate his men to a task beyond human capabilities? Was it his God that sent him forward to sacrifice himself? Or was Max Shapiro merely a mad dog, full of a glorious madness?

Huxley’s Whores rose to the heights of their dead captain. They no longer resembled human beings. Savage beyond all savagery, murderous beyond murder, they shrieked, “Blood!”

“BLOOD!”…“BLOOD!”

The enemy, who were mere mortals, fell back.

H
ELLO,
T
ULSA
W
HITE:
T
HIS IS
M
C
Q
UADE,
F
OX
C
OMPANY.
W
E HAVE STOPPED THEM.
W
E HAVE STOPPED THEM.

H
ELLO,
M
C
Q
UADE
: R
EINFORCEMENTS ARE LANDING ON THE BEACH RIGHT NOW….

After the assault on Red Beach One and the stopping of the counterattacks, the rest of the battle of Saipan was anticlimax for the Second Battalion. After the first twenty-four hours there weren’t enough men left to constitute a fighting unit. The rest of the Sixth Marines were in the thick of it all the way. And so, at long last, the regiment had kept its date with destiny and taken its place beside its predecessors at Belleau Wood and Guadalcanal and Tarawa.

On the Second Battalion the fate of the operation had hinged and like a lot of kids on a lot of other islands they had apparently been licked. But nobody got around to telling them so and it was that extra something nobody can explain that pulled them through.

Command of the battalion had changed hands four times in twenty-four hours. Huxley, Wellman, Pagan, and Marlin. But in my book, it was always Highpockets who was the skipper. What he had taught them, what he had half killed them for, was there when it was most needed.

The conquest of Saipan was followed up when the Third Marine Division landed further south and reconquered Guam. Then we pushed over the channel to capture Saipan’s neighbor, Tinian. They called Tinian the perfect campaign. But it wasn’t quite perfect. I got wounded and was sent back to Saipan for a couple quarts of blood at the base hospital.

I walked into Chaplain Peterson’s tent. Peterson arose to greet me. “How’s the old salt?”

“They’re not going to beat me out of my thirty-year retirement,” I said.

“Good. I got your request, Mac. I think it is a fine thing to do. Father McKale is sending Pedro’s personal belongings over.”

“I’ll be shoving off for the States soon. If I knew Gomez’s address, I’d visit there, too.”

“It’s good of you to give up your furlough to visit the parents of these boys.”

“It’s the least I could do.”

“I’ll have the things sent over to your camp.”

“Chaplain Peterson…what about Andy?”

The balding minister shook his head. “Only time will heal his wounds. I’ve tried to talk to him, as you have. In a little while they will restore his face, but…”

“They’ll never restore his leg.”

“It is a pity. He has a wonderful girl and so much to live for. I took this letter around and read it to him. He threw it back at me.” I took the envelope from him and opened it and began to read.
“My Dearest, You have a son….”

I looked up at Peterson.

“Born on D-day, Mac.”

It is rather hard to say what Timmy looks like. Poor little dear, what a horrible mixture he is. New Zealand, American, Scotch, and Swede. At any rate he bellows like a Marine and eats like a lumberjack. I think I’ll keep him. You know how happy I am.

Andy, we know where you are. Our prayers are with you every second of every minute. I know that it will be a long long time before you will be back with us but remember that all Timmy and I live for will be the day you return forever.

Mother and Dad have been dears. Dad is already looking about for a pony for Timmy. The poor wee fellow can’t even hold his head up yet. Mom spends half her time digging up American recipes. She says she is really going to fatten you up.

Darling I can hardly wait till the day Timmy is old enough to walk. I shall take him over to our land and tell him that some day his Daddy is coming back and clear it and build us a nice warm little house and we shall live in it forever and ever.

Winter is coming, but soon it shall be spring and we will be here as always.

Your loving wife,
Pat

I dropped the letter on the desk.

“He’ll go back,” the chaplain said. “Love like that girl’s is too strong a magnet for any man.”

Speedy came up the road to meet me. “Mac, just got the word. We’re shoving off tomorrow.”

“Going home?”

“Yes.”

“I think I’ll drop over to the hospital and say good-by to Andy.”

Speedy grasped my shoulder. “I was just over there. He told me to get the hell out.”

I walked into the ward, down the row of legless and armless men till I reached the far end. I opened the screened enclosure around his bed and drew up a chair. Andy lay flat on his back, his face invisible under a swath of bandages leaving only his eyes and lips open.

“Hi, knucklehead, how they been treating you?” He did not answer. “I was just over to Chaplain Peterson’s.”