Battle Cry - Leon Uris [195]
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 LINCOLN; we were LINCOLN WHITE. 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.