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By Root 1550 0

hole. The sergeants were moving quickly now, cursing shouts at the men to get up out of the concrete cover, to keep up the advance. Some obeyed, but Adams saw others, lumps of green, helmets and ponchos, sitting motionless against the low solid walls, too terrified to move. He ignored them, could not be angry at them, knew the fear, the terror, tried not to think of that. The tombs were everywhere, like some oversized cemetery, spread out across the open ground. Each one held men now, the shellfire driving them into cover. Adams wanted to follow, pure instinct, the luscious allure of a concrete wall, saw Porter yelling something, waving still, pulling his men past one of the round gaping maws. Above all the sounds, one rose, louder, the freight-train roar coming closer. Adams didn’t hesitate, dropped flat, the shell passing close to one side, erupting with a deafening concussion of fire and smoke directly in the arc of the closest tomb. He hugged the muddy ground for a long second, the ringing in his ears sharp, painful, but he saw men rising up, Porter again. The lieutenant was moving back through his men, grabbing them, pushing them forward, and Adams saw his face, furious eyes, a glimpse back at Adams, a sharp nod, words, and Adams was up again, blew mud from his mouth, breathed in a lungful of smoke, fought it with a violent cough. He looked toward the tomb, concrete in huge pieces, scattered around a smear of black in the circular arc, pieces of … men.

“Move!”

“No stopping! Keep moving!”

He kept his eyes on the bloody awful scene, boots and a gathering pool of black … something. He turned away, tried to find the energy, saw Porter again. Adams saw him look into what remained of the tomb, of the men who had sought safety there. Adams felt a punch of fear. Who? Does he know? But there was no time for that, the lieutenant waving again, pushing his men past the awful scene. The shellfire came down in a new pattern now, to one side, splattering rhythmically into the muddy ground, bursts of water and dirt tossed skyward. One shell struck a piece of steel wreckage, and he saw men going down around it, like petals of a flower, blown out by the burst of shrapnel. Adams tried to ignore that, pushed his legs forward, searched for Porter, anyone familiar, but there were no faces, just smoke and mud and fire. The hill was close, squatting in the rolling plain like a fat loaf of bread, no more than forty yards high. Out in front of the hill there was no cover at all, just a gently sloping plain, streaks of tracer fire ripping across from several directions. On the hill itself came flashes from the muzzles of a hundred rifles, more, every rocky hole alive with men and guns. He hunched his shoulders, as though fighting off the rain, ran forward, following another man, rapid steps, muddy splashes, saw a fat rock at the base of the hill, men huddled low. Behind it one man was lying flat, blood on his head, the uniform ripped away, the man’s arm … gone. Machine guns ripped the air all around him, pinging on the rocks, the smell of burnt coral, the pop and whine of rifle fire, mortar shells coming down all out across the open ground behind them. Adams glanced around, panicked, didn’t know what to do, saw men falling around him, some diving for bits of shelter, some just collapsing. He leapt past the rock, saw men climbing, this hill so much like the one before, deep crevices and shallow cracks, overhanging rocks and jagged edges of coral. The smoke was thick, blinding, suffocating, every kind of projectile flying past, steel and rock. The blasts were growing in number, fiery eruptions small and large, the thumps and thuds and cracks blending together into one great deafening roar, punctuated by screams, shouts, the broad hillside its own perfect hell.

The bombing and shelling of the hill from American air strikes and naval guns had gone on for several days, long before the Marines had actually reached the hill itself. American artillerymen and tankers had naturally assumed they had so badly damaged the Japanese position that few