The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [127]
By midday the fog had mostly cleared, but the rains still came, and with no hope of moving supply trucks forward, the men had to make do with the food and ammunition they carried. No runner could hope to survive by hauling anything across the open ground in daylight, and when the order came for a new attack, each platoon had been sorted out by their lieutenants, who made sure each man had grenades, and enough clips for his rifle to be effective. Then more orders came, and Adams had seen Porter sitting upright on the edge of his foxhole, wiping down his carbine, as though the danger had passed, that anything they had gone through so far was only a taste. The Marines all along the lines were pulled up into position for the assault again and again, striking at the low rocky hills that served as the strong points along the main Japanese defensive line. Porter had told his own men only what had come across his radio, that the brass was growing more impatient watching casualties hauled back to the command posts, that dead men wrapped in ponchos meant that something more had to be done. It was an easy conclusion to draw by men who stayed dry under their camouflaged tents. But Porter spread the word to his men, who, for once, agreed with their commanders. There was no victory to be had as long as the Marines were sitting still. For two long days they had absorbed a horrific toll trying to take hills that the Japanese seemed expert at protecting. Adams had seen the corpsman die because the man was doing his job. Others had watched friends close by ripped apart by shrapnel, cut down by the fire of the Nambu guns, helmets cracked by the deadly fire of a sniper. They knew with perfect certainty that they were facing a very capable enemy who had only one goal: to die by killing as many Americans as he could. The Marines understood what had to happen well before their officers made it official. No matter that they had been driven off the hills, they had no choice but to try again.
NORTHWEST OF “HILL TWO”
MAY 12, 1945
Around them the entire battalion had gathered, brought closer together for an assault someone far behind them seemed to think would end their problems. Charlie Hill now lay to their east, the place assaulted repeatedly, but this time, when the men of Bennett’s company had been marched through the muddy fields, it was more to the west, away from the familiar ground they had expected to climb. In the darkness there were no features to the ground at all, beyond the dips in the terrain, and the familiar mud. The only light came from the strange storm of flares, mostly in the distance, silhouetting the distant hills, or star shells, American, sent aloft to aid the artillery and tank fire. The rumble from the big guns had been almost continuous, and as Adams plodded along, keeping his boots in the sloppy tracks of the men before him, he had stopped hearing the peculiar differences between all the varieties of shells. He had still not been able to eat much of anything, had munched down a brick-hard cracker from a K ration box. The oily water had become a part of the routine, the nauseating taste just another piece of the torturous test of endurance that to most of the Marines had become normal. But the crack-up cases were increasing, Adams watching as one man from Porter’s platoon suddenly leapt out into the rain, running in wide circles, shouting at the nonexistent sun, outraged that there hadn’t been any sign of a sunset. It was a ridiculous show of utter insanity, the man attracting a storm of machine gun fire, standing perfectly upright in the wide open, arms raised, fists shaking, curses directed at no one