The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [126]
“Mortar!”
He splashed into the bottom of the hole, Welty shrinking himself against the far end, shoulders hunched, nothing else to do. The ground shuddered with each blast, mud tossed in on them, a half-dozen thumps coming in close to the network of foxholes. And then, silence. Adams rose up from the thick goo, Welty beside him, listened for the inevitable, and now it came.
“Corpsman! Doc! Doc!”
One man was screaming, a high thick whine, another voice, trying to calm him. But the scream continued, and Adams searched through the mist, saw a fresh heap of smoking mud, dug up by the mortar shell. From behind a man moved up, crawling quickly, closer to the churned earth.
“Coming!”
“Doc! Oh hell!”
The corpsman reached the smoking hole, lay flat, peered down, seemed suddenly headless, an unnerving sight, Adams blinking it away. The screaming came again, the corpsman working furiously, still lying flat outside the blasted hole, and within a minute the screaming seemed to drift away, then stopped. The corpsman rose up, rolled over to one side, motionless for a long second, black mud on his arms, his face. Adams saw a glimpse of the man’s eyes, empty, staring at nothing, then a slow shake of his head. He began to crawl away, back to his own safe place, and in a thick low voice, Welty said, “Nothing he could do. I bet.”
“How do you know? Maybe he gave him some morphine, shut him up.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Doc! Doc!”
The voice came from the distance, somewhere in the fog, beyond a short rise. Adams saw the corpsman stop, turn, still on his knees, the man’s head hanging low, resignation to the awful task. He moved that way, and now another man crawled out of a hole, moving with him, keeping his distance a few paces behind.
“Doc!”
The corpsman didn’t speak, just crawled toward the voice, climbed slowly up the incline, the second man moving up faster, sliding in beside him, a carbine in the man’s hand. The corpsman peered over, trying to see, to find the foxhole of the wounded man, and now the shot punched the air, the corpsman collapsing in a heap, flat, motionless. The second man ducked low in the mud, then fired the carbine, emptied the magazine, stayed low, reloaded, fired again. Adams watched in horror, saw no movement from the corpsman, the other man still reloading, spraying fire from the carbine out beyond the muddy rise. The man slid back, reached out for the boot of the corpsman, dragging him, and now another man rose up, scampering close, another hand on the corpsman’s boots. They slid him through the mud, plowing a shallow furrow back through the foxholes. More men climbed up, but there was a harsh voice from the man with the carbine, sending the men back into their holes. Adams could see now. It was Porter.
The two men pulled the corpsman back past Adams, who stared, frozen, a new sickness, felt a hand on his shoulder, Welty, pulling him down.
“They’re right out there, sport. Keep your damn head down.”
“They shot the doc!”
“Japs know some English, Clay. Doc’s an easy one. Don’t ever call out a name, the Japs will call ’em right back to you.” Adams looked at him, Welty’s eyes cold, the same grim stare. “The doc shoulda known better.”
Adams looked back, the men already gone behind another low rise, the corpsman’s body hauled somewhere off the line.
“Known better? How?”
Throughout the day the positions were shifted, units sliding to one side or another, pulled into position for new attacks on the hills the Japanese still controlled. The fire from the Japanese positions had come in waves and spurts, whenever targets had appeared.