The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [110]
“Here, sir! A message has just come through from the Imperial High Command.”
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
The man held out the folded paper, and Yahara took it, passed it on to Ushijima without looking at it. Ushijima opened the paper, read.
The Imperial Command informs General Ushijima that the Imperial Air Force is prepared to launch a glorious assault against the Americans who now threaten your position. Our glorious emperor has been advised of this plan and has expressed his complete confidence to General Ushijima that this attack will utterly destroy the American fleet. General Ushijima is ordered to hold fast to his position of strength on Okinawa and continue to inflict devastating losses to our enemies. Success is assured.
He stared at the message, the characters blurring, felt the tears returning, a mix of sadness and overwhelming anger. He crumpled the paper in his hands, threw it hard against the wall.
16. ADAMS
NORTH OF THE ASA KAWA RIVER, OKINAWA
MAY 8, 1945
The rains had come again the day before, and with so much of the vegetation and clusters of trees already destroyed, the ground and the roads that cut through the countryside were becoming a sea of deepening mud. The Sixth had advanced southward into an area vacated by the First Division, those Marines moving more to the east. Beyond the east flank of the First, two of the American army divisions, the Seventy-seventh and Ninety-sixth, held the ground all the way to the far coast. There had been more griping about that, so many of the Marines insultingly dismissive of the army’s work, but the infantry who stood beside them had nothing to be embarrassed about. Throughout May 4 and 5, the unexpected Japanese counterattack had been directed mostly into army positions, and despite low expectations from the Marines, the army had held their ground with as much ruthlessness as the Marines themselves. No one in the front lines knew how badly the Japanese had spent themselves, and how many more of the enemy still waited in their hiding places among the low hills. But the army units were just as prepared to resume their forward advance as the fresher Marines who had moved in alongside them.
The truck was sliding, tilting to the right, then farther still, the men on the high side tumbling over, falling into the men whose backs were now to the ground.
“Get out! Move it!”
He saw Porter yelling the order from outside, the lieutenant standing in knee-deep mud. No one had to be told twice, the truck balanced precariously with two wheels completely buried. They bailed out as quickly as each man could move, some stumbling, backpacks and weapons hitting the mushy ground. Immediately they were engulfed by another horror, the rain and mud blanketed by a pungent stink, the smell of the earth revealing some hint of what lay hidden beneath it. Adams felt his face curling up, fighting the smell, far worse than before, others reacting as well. But he saw the lieutenant high-stepping through the mud as quickly as he could, waving his arms.
“There! That shallow dip. Get there! Now!”
The men flowed clumsily away from the trucks, Adams aware of the urgency in Porter’s order, and he saw the lieutenant staring away, down another long hillside. Even in the driving rain, Adams could see men dug in everywhere, the soft ground pockmarked by foxholes and narrow trenches. In the shallow bowl where Porter had sent them, other men were waving them on, officers certainly, anonymous in their ponchos. But the authority was there, the men who knew something, who were assigning Porter’s platoon and the rest of Bennett’s company to a place where they could dig their own holes. Adams felt the mud pulling at his boots, tried to keep his balance, stepped as quickly as he could. He heard a new sound now, a sharp rip in the air above him, the shell impacting off to the left, near some of the men on the far flank. The shell didn’t explode with much vigor, the blast throwing up more mud than fire,