Battle Cry - Leon Uris [203]
A crazy thought repeated itself over and over: I hadn’t brushed my teeth that morning. I didn’t want to die with a bad taste in my mouth. It annoyed me, I didn’t know why. I wanted to brush my teeth.
My pent-up tension vanished as our harrowing wait on the landing craft lengthened. I didn’t want to avenge anyone or anything. All I knew was that I was Mac and wanted to live. I didn’t want to get shot in the water…I must have been mad to think of a thousand enemies. I wanted them all gone.
A numbness crept over me. Coward…coward…coward, I said to myself. After all these years…. I tried to shake it off as the boats pushed close to Bairiki.
But I was wrapped in fear, fear that I had never known before. I felt that any second I would have to stand up and scream out the horror inside me.
The boat bucked furiously, throwing me flat and sending me skidding over the slippery deck. The front ramp buckled with a clang of lead on steel. The Japs were gunning us!
I felt urine running down my leg…I was afraid I was going to vomit. The red glint of a tracer bullet whizzed over the water in our direction. The boat reared and crashed hard, flinging me into the ramp. I turned around. Half the men were puking. Then I saw Huxley…he was sallow and trembling. I had seen men freeze before and had had contempt for them. But now the stiffening fear was taking me too…I must not let it happen!
“Get the control boat!” Huxley ordered. “Have them contact air cover and get that machine gun.”
In less than a minute there was an ear-splitting roar. We raised our eyes. Navy flyers were swooping in, their wing guns blazing. I began barking orders automatically. A billow of smoke rose up from the beach.
“They got them!”
The ramp dropped. I plunged waist deep into the whitish water and was no longer afraid.
We plodded in. Over the water came a steady whine of rifle bullets. The lagoon spouted little geysers. The Japs were still their usual lousy selves at marksmanship. Someone in front of me suddenly dropped. As a pool of blood formed, for a moment I thought it was Andy. The dead Marine bobbed up and rolled over. He was a machine gunner from How Company. I brushed past him as the water dropped to knee depth. I began sprinting zigzaggedly. My feet suddenly went out from under me. I had stepped into a pothole. A hand on my back pulled me upright.
“Come on, Mac, keep your powder dry,” Seabags shouted as he raced past me.
Max Shapiro’s Foxes were already inland and at work. They had moved in quickly and accurately on the enemy. The Captain had developed a deadly team.
I hit the beach and wheeled about…. “Come on, goddammit! Move in and set up that TBX and get in with Rocky.”
Spanish Joe, Danny, and me set up the radio hastily between two palms. A sharp report and a singing whizz peeled the bark from one of the trees. We all fell flat. I caught a glimpse of a form racing through the clearing before us, and emptied a clip of my carbine at him. The Jap dropped and rolled over a half dozen times. Danny was on his feet…. “Cover me,” he shouted.
He ran a couple of steps, stopped cold, and backed up. A vision came to him of standing over a Jap on Guadalcanal blowing loose his bayonet…the spray of blood and insides over his dungarees…
“What’s the matter, Danny?”
“Nothing,” he said and continued. He bent down quickly, threw the Jap’s rifle away, and frisked him. He signaled us forward.
“He’s still alive,” Danny said. Spanish Joe leveled with his carbine. I grabbed him.
“Hold it. They might want to question him. Find Doc Kyser and LeForce.”
Sporadic rifle fire crackled as our boys went about cleaning up the resistance. We were in a hard, sun-baked clearing. The dying Jap lay flat on his back and the blood spilling from him was blotted up by the coral ground. Danny and