Battle Cry - Leon Uris [205]
It was ghoulish. As we waded in through the potholes from a mile out, the lagoon was filled with bobbing bodies. There were hundreds of them. Marines of the Second and Eighth Regiments. I felt sick and humiliated as I passed. They were bloated and distorted beyond recognition. Many lay face down, their hair weaving up and down on small ripples.
Others lay on their backs stiff with rigor mortis. Their faces were slick from the washing of water and their eyes stared blindly with the wild expression they had worn when the bullet cut them down. And others, whose eyes had been eaten away by the salt, had running, jellied masses over their faces and holes where eyes had once been. It was grisly to be alive in this watery graveyard where lifeless hulks danced on the crests of the waves.
Hundreds of rubber boats were moving in the opposite direction towards the landing craft that awaited them on the edge of the barrier reef. In the rubber boats lay bloody, moaning boys: the wounded. Behind the boats, in the water, shaggy corpsmen and stretcher bearers from the division band passed us by the hundreds, finding sanctuary at last from the island of death.
The stink was rancid as we set foot on Blue Beach. There was no breeze in the humid atmosphere. We jumped to the sea wall and saw devastation to defy description. Rubble on rubble, a junkyard of smoldering brimstone. Every yard brought to light a dead Marine or a dead Jap lying in stiff grotesque pose. I wanted to look up but my foot would touch flesh and I couldn’t.
We split up to recheck the bunkers that had held from three to three hundred Japs, working with the engineers to flush out any that could possibly be alive now.
I stood atop some sandbags of a high fortification. From there I could see Betio from one end to the other. It seemed inconceivable that eight thousand men could have died there. I could have walked the length of the island in twenty minutes and could have thrown a rock across a greater part of its width. All that remained were a few dozen cocoanut trees erect in the shambles, standing eerily against the sky. Our victory was complete. There were only four prisoners and three of them were Korean laborers.
A radio was set up. We were all very quiet. Around us sat men of the Second and Eighth and our First Battalion. I wanted to go up and offer them cigarettes or some water or just talk, but I couldn’t. On the airstrip the Seabees had already started clearing the rubble with bulldozers to hasten the hour the first plane would touch its wheels on Lieutenant Roy Field.
Sam Huxley was on his haunches, his helmet off, his head lowered and his eyes on the deck. His face was pasty and his eyes brimmed with tears. Colonel Malcolm, the Sixth Marine commander, walked up to him.
“Hello, Sam.”
“Hello, Colonel.”
“Look, old man, don’t take it so badly.”
“I can’t help it. We were the only battalion in the whole damned—oh, what’s the use.”
“What is your casualty report, Sam?”
“Four dead, six wounded.”
“Would it have made it any better if you had been in the assault wave?”
“I feel like a cheater. I suppose you think I’m a sadist….”
“Of course not. We all wanted the assault assignment.”
“I guess I’ve been a Marine too long. Glory happy. General Pritchard told me I was glory happy. We’re laughingstocks now…. The hiking fools.”
“Sam, the Sixth doesn’t have to be ashamed. It was the First Battalion that broke their backs….”
“While we sat on our twats on Bairiki.”
“Cigarette?”
“No, thanks.”
“Anyhow, General Philips wants to see you at the CP in a half-hour.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come on, man, snap