Battle Cry - Leon Uris [124]
Anxiety and growing tenseness mingled with sweat of the hot tropic sun as we neared the lines. Then we saw them—the Second and Eighth Marines coming back. They were kids, most of them, just like our kids…but now they were old men. Hungry, skinny, tired old men. As the trucks whisked by we looked into their gaunt bloodshot eyes and at their matted greasy beards. They spoke little. Only a feeble wave or a managed wisecrack.
“So the Pogey Bait Sixth finally came.”
“Yeah, you guys can go home now, a fighting outfit is moving up.”
“Hope you boys don’t mind sleeping on the nasty old deck?”
“How’s things up on the lines, got a USO up there?”
“You’ll find out, Pogey Bait.”
“Hey, what town is this? We must be nearing Hollywood; the Eighth Marines still playing movie actors?”
“I never thought I’d be glad to see the Sixth, but you’re sure a fine sight. Hey, look at all them nice clean-cut American boys.”
The trucks kept passing. The sallow-faced men with the expressionless look of terror—and a look of nothing. Then we became tired, tired and sweaty. We wanted to go to the beach and wash—but we wouldn’t get a bath now for a long time.
It cooled off and the rain came down. The last mile…don’t look behind or you’ll see what you will look like a month from now. Look forward at the grassy slopes, the jungle, the caves. Look forward—there is nothing behind.
CHAPTER 7
January 19, 1943
HOW LONG had we been in mud? Only six days? We were up to our asses in mud. It was turning evening and the rain would be coming soon to make more mud. It was nearly knee deep in this ravine. The hills were slick and slimy, the air was heavy and putrid with the smell of dead Japs. You could smell one a mile away. The whiskerino contest was off to a good start, only you couldn’t see the whiskers for the mud. Mud caked in so thick on the face and body and the fast-rotting dungarees that it not only seemed the uniform of the day but our very flesh covering.
The drive had been slow, radio operation almost nil. We only used one set, a TBX, to Regiment. Regiment’s code was Topeka; we were Topeka White. Due to the snail’s pace and the terrain, telephone squad carried most of the load in keeping communications. My boys were used as pack mules. They assisted the telephone men when needed. Mostly, they made several trips a day to the beach supply dump, over glassy ridges, two miles to the coast. Back again in blistering sun, carrying five-gallon cans of water, dragged with curses back to the CP. It was a lifeline. They packed heavy boxes of ammunition, C-ration, D-ration, the chocolate candy bars that tasted like Ex-Lax but held enough vitamins to sustain a man for a day. They walked, limped, and crawled the tortuous miles back and forth to the dump like a line of ants, worn and beaten but coming back again for another load.
At darkness they’d crawl in holes in the mud to sleep until their round of guard duty—attempt to sleep with swarms of bugs all around, and the hated anopheles zinging down and biting into the flesh. And even as the mosquitoes bit and sucked blood, the Marines couldn’t raise a dead-tired arm to slap them off.
We hadn’t seen a Jap, not a live one. Only the dead with their terrible stench. The riflemen left them there for us to bunk with. But live ones were there. You could feel them all about, peeking at you from the treetops…from the brush…watching your every move.
In the hole at night you’d huddle next to your mate to stop the shakes. Getting malaria? Hell no, just shaking wet and the mud sliding around in your boondockers.