The Final Storm (10 page)

A
dams had joined the Corps shortly after Pearl Harbor, had spent what seemed to him to be an eternity in the training bases stateside before his opportunity had come to sail westward. The indignity of the filariasis had been more than a health scare. Adams carried a kind of pride that only a few of the men around him would understand. He was the youngest of two, his brother serving in the army as a paratroop sergeant. Jesse was older, and in Clay’s mind, tougher. When Clay announced to his brother that he had joined the Marines, Jesse seemed to understand even then that the younger brother had something to prove, to make up for all the fistfights, all the youthful bullying that Jesse had been called upon to prevent. In the mining town of Silver City, New Mexico, a man was defined by his toughness, and Clay had not been the biggest or the strongest, not in school, and not in his own home. Their father was a vicious brute of a man, who hated life and struck back at his own misery by striking first at his sons. When Clay enlisted and announced to his parents that he wanted to go to war, his father’s response had been an uncaring shrug, no ceremony, no pride. Neither Clay nor his brother had been surprised. Far more difficult for both boys had been the tearful wrath of a terrified mother, the woman who had stood as much ground as her frail spirit would allow, absorbing the endless abuse from the man she had married. Clay had never shaken that from his mind: one awful night after dinner, his proud announcement that he had enlisted to be a Marine, and his
mother’s response, a shocking surprise, this quiet-suffering, soulful woman exploding with angry tears. Clay still didn’t understand that, the furious attack aimed at her youngest son. To the eighteen-year-old, it had seemed grotesquely unfair that his mother would expect her precious boys to stay close at hand, and that just by leaving, he was abandoning her to a life she could not escape alone. Jesse had been as supportive of Clay as any older brother could be, had stood between Clay and his mother with calm assurances that everything would be fine, that the Marines would do Clay some good, teach him to be a man, teach him to be a better man than her own husband. And so Clay had had no second thoughts, had made his escape, had taken the train westward to San Diego. He could not know that within months, Jesse would fight that same battle again, this time for himself. Clay had wondered if it had been worse for his older brother, if Jesse had been infected even more strongly by the guilt of abandoning the family. It was a horrifying dream to realize that his mother expected either of her boys to stay in that horrific place, to
be
her family, sacrificing any boyhood dreams only to work in the copper mine, destined to mimic the suffering and the decay of their father.

But his mother had finally softened, and within weeks of his enlistment, her letters began to reach him. The first piece of news was that Jesse would go to Europe, would jump out of airplanes, and later, Clay learned only that his older brother had quickly risen to sergeant in the new Eighty-second Airborne Division. Clay had been amazed by that, but then, he knew his brother would have something to prove as well, would have to accomplish anything that would prevent him from sinking back into their father’s life in the copper mines. Clay had wanted to hear all about that, the whole idea of jumping out of airplanes not only wondrous but utterly insane. But there could be no letters directly between them from a world apart, just the tidbits of news his mother would pass along. It came mostly in a trickle of sadness, but Jesse was at least alive, had fought through the campaigns in Sicily and then Normandy. As Clay labored in the clean white offices of San Diego, there had been a glint of sunlight in one of her letters, a cheerful announcement that Jesse was coming home, the paratrooper’s war over. But Clay did not want to write to his brother, not yet, not while he endured the embarrassment of sleeping on white sheets in soft beds. Once free of the hospital, the office work had drained him of his dignity. The daily routine had seemed to be designed to inflict a more agonizing death on an eager Marine than any enemy weapon could. Clay
could never admit to his brother what his duty had become, and so he lied about it by not writing at all. He had the perfect excuse of every Marine who toiled in some godforsaken jungle, or on some atoll that no one could find on a map. Mail was chancy at best, letters requiring long weeks to reach their destination, if they arrived at all. For months Clay kept silent from his own family, ashamed that he had failed to do what his brother had done, to fight the good fight, to earn his stripes. Certainly there would be the secrets the paratrooper would never share with his mother, the stark horror of all that he had seen, how many of the enemy he had killed, how many friends were lost. If there was a hot spear in Clay’s back, driving him out beyond his recuperation and his soft bed, it was that. He wanted to be that kind of warrior, sharing those stories with his brother, comparing the different enemies, the fears and miseries and triumphs, a link the two of them could have for the rest of their lives. He knew that their shared respect would be a perfect shield against the fury of their father, and give solace to the woman who only wanted her sons to survive, to return, to be her pride in a home where pride had long disappeared.

When word came of the formation of the Sixth Division, Clay had pulled every string a private can pull, had begged and cajoled, made ridiculous speeches to indifferent officers. The process took agonizing months, and then word had come of something new and strange and wonderful. Somewhere in some white office in Washington, the decision had been made to allow women into the Marine Corps. Soon they had begun to arrive in San Diego, their duty freeing those men who agonized to join or rejoin combat units. When the first women arrived at his own post, Adams felt the giddy excitement that finally, he would go back
out there
. Once he had his orders in hand, all those newsreels and casualty counts were forgotten, all the sights and sounds and smells from the hospital put aside. Finally Clay Adams would hold the steel in his hands, and this time he would face the enemy.

O
FFSHORE
, U
LITHI
A
TOLL
, C
AROLINE
I
SLANDS
M
ARCH
27, 1945

“Anybody know where the hell we’re going?”

“Shut up. The captain’s on his way.”

The talk continued, different fragments of scuttlebutt from the men blending together into utter confusion. Sergeant Ferucci lay in his own bunk, said nothing, doing what the other sergeants were doing, letting the
men blow off steam, the crowded compartment thick with the stink of cigarettes and socks. Adams had been shooting craps in one corner of the cramped space behind one of the hammocklike bunks, but the dice had not been friendly, and he moved away, left three other men to their game. Above him a cloud of cigarette smoke hovered over the bunk of Jack Welty, another of the newly arrived veterans.

“They strip you clean, Clay?”

“A couple bucks. Not really in the mood. You got anything to read?”

“Nothing I wanna share with you.”

Adams enjoyed Welty’s Virginia drawl, the young man barely nineteen. He knew that Welty’s family had money, but Welty seemed embarrassed by that, seemed to resent the lavish care packages of odd food and clothing, most of it completely inappropriate for a Marine. The greatest laugh had come at Welty’s expense only a month before, a large box addressed to Welty that had been his family’s obvious attempt to help him
fit in
with his
comrades
. It had been a case of beef stew, small cans not much different from the prime ingredient in their K rations. After the humiliating howls from the others had subsided, the stew disappeared. Adams had a strong suspicion that Welty had tossed it overboard.

Welty sat up, let his feet dangle just above Adams’s head. All around them men were sitting with their backs against the steel bulkheads, or sleeping fitfully in tiny bunks, trying to ignore the chorus of conversation, most of it wild speculation of their next port of call. Across from Adams, another man lay against a gap between the bunks, his helmet liner low over his eyes, and said in another soft drawl, “Tokyo Bay. Heard a sailor saying something about minefields there.”

The responses came from around the cramped space, the usual skepticism, opinions from men who knew that they had no idea what they were talking about.

“You know how far it is to Tokyo Bay? We’d get bombed to hell before we got halfway there.”

“Formosa. I heard Formosa. Found it on a map.”

“Hell no. We’re going to China. Japs have been kicking ass, and they need us to take the ports back. Gotta be better than getting blown to hell trying to take Tokyo Bay.”

“I been bombed plenty of times, shelled and machine-gunned. All I know is that Tokyo Bay is in Japan, right? That’s close enough for me.”

“He’s right. Let’s hit ’em where it hurts. Get this thing over with.”

“I wrote my sis I was in Ulithi, and the censors sent it back to me. Top secret. How can a place nobody ever heard of be top secret?”

Adams let the talk flow past, adjusted himself to the hard surface under his rear end, tried to find a comfortable way to sit. He looked up at Welty, saw freckles and red hair, the white smile that never seemed to go away. Adams said, “Hey, Jack, where you think we’re heading?”

Welty shrugged.

“Someplace else. Can’t say I’ll miss our glorious week on Ulithi. A sand bar with palm trees. Not much to get excited about there. Rather go back to Guadalcanal.”

The attention turned from the argument over geography, one man catching Welty’s words.

“Hey, Red. I bet you loved all those island girls? They ain’t never seen anything like you. They thought your head was on fire.”

Welty shook his head, ignored the man, who returned to the manic discussion of their next mission. Adams still looked up at the red hair, said, “I don’t remember seeing too many girls on Ulithi. Guadalcanal, different story.”

“You can have ’em, Clay.” Welty tapped his shirt pocket. “Got all the gal I need right here. She’s back in Richmond writing me right now. Gotta write her again too, before we get all wrapped up in whatever we’re doing next. My parents aren’t too happy about it, but not much they can do about it now.”

Adams left that alone, knew Welty wouldn’t go into details about his parents at all. And he had seen the photo Welty kept in his pocket, a bright smile on a pretty blonde, every letter coming with that soft scent of some kind of perfume.

“Yeah, well, can’t argue that one. Agree with you though. These island dames don’t do a thing for me. Most of ’em got no teeth, or too much of everything else.”

Welty lay back in the bunk, his feet still dangling, and Adams closed his eyes, tried to avoid the arguments around him, thought, I’ve seen a few of these island girls that weren’t too damn ugly. A few. Not sure what I’d do if one of ’em pounced on me.

He had heard plenty from the combat veterans, warnings that the natives on any of these islands could be as dangerous as the enemy soldiers they helped to hide. The words had been drilled into them all, first by the company commander, Captain Bennett, then Sergeant Ferucci. Stay the
hell away from the indigenous people. He still didn’t know exactly what
indigenous
meant, but the meaning was clear enough. Out here, anyone not a Marine could be looking to kill a Marine. Simple enough.

“Listen up!”

The voice came from the hatchway, and Adams saw Captain Bennett lean in through the oval opening, followed by the platoon commander, Lieutenant Porter. The men shifted across the tight space, gave the officers room to stand, and Bennett said, “All right, it’s time to let you in on the big secret. Though why anything needs to be so damn secret out here is a mystery to me. Any of you know where Okinawa is?”

There was a hum, some men suddenly aware that the secret wasn’t secret anymore.

“Didn’t think so. If you’ve heard jack about what the First went through on Iwo Jima, you know that place was nothing but a hole in the ocean, one tiny hot rock. Some of you found the same thing on Peleliu. Not much to look at, not much to fight over. But we fought over it anyway, because it was our job. This one’s different. A hell of a lot different. Okinawa isn’t some four-mile lava pile. It’s a damn country. Sixty miles from top to bottom, maybe a dozen miles across. There are several major airfields there that the top brass wants, and a load of Japs defending them. As bad as that ought to be, there are a hell of a lot of civilians there who have been under the Jap boot heels for years. One of our jobs will be to fix that, liberate those people. I’ve heard about how many of you have been shooting your mouths off how anxious you are to get started on our next mission. Well, good. I want to see you
enthusiastic
about your jobs. Whether you got your training at Parris Island or San Diego, or whether you had to eat sand for General Shepherd on Guadalcanal, everything you were taught about fighting the Japs is about to be tested.” The captain paused, gave a sharp nod to Lieutenant Porter, who stepped forward, shouted, “Which way do you run your K-bar knife into a Jap’s gut?”

The response was immediate, a chorus.

“Up, sir!”

“What do you do when you pass an officer on the line?”

There was a slight hesitation, then a smattering of responses, all the same.

“Nothing, sir!”

Porter seemed satisfied but Bennett said, “That’s right. Nothing. No salutes, no
yes sir, no sir
. No
sir
at all. I’m not going home in a box because
you ladies suddenly decide to show me some respect within earshot of a Jap sniper. No officer is to use binoculars. That shows authority, and Japs will target anyone they think is in charge. No radio operator is to let his antenna show, no walkie-talkie operator is to stand in the wide damn open. The Japs have shown us what kinds of targets they prefer, and this company isn’t going to offer them up on a platter.” He paused. “Lieutenant, finish the briefing. I’ve got four more platoons on this boat, and every one of them is uglier than the last one. That makes you special, ladies. You were first.”