The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [131]
But Hill Two was becoming more than just a number on a map. The network of hills that lay behind it was part of the interconnecting defenses that ran in an undulating line through the Japanese strongholds that belted the entire southern half of the island, the extraordinary defensive wall created by General Ushijima, crafted by the perfect efficiency of Colonel Yahara. Since the American command had dismissed the notion of bypassing the line with amphibious assaults, General Buckner’s troops were under orders that made it clear that if the Japanese defenses were to be broken, it would be up to the two army divisions now to the east, the Seventh and the Ninety-sixth, and the two Marine divisions, the First and the Sixth, to ram headlong into whatever the Japanese had prepared for them. Against Ushijima’s eastern defenses, the army divisions faced the same kinds of bloody challenges, while in the center, the First Marines pushed toward the enormous stronghold anchored by Shuri Castle. But none of the Americans were finding easy success. In the west, what was now the right flank of the American drive, the Sixth Marine Division was charged still with securing the low hills that offered artillery protection for the city of Naha, and then capturing Naha itself. But the rugged rocky formations held far more power than the Marines had expected. Once they finally rolled over Charlie Hill, they encountered a larger, more elaborate section of the Japanese defenses, the maps showing only a series of low hills that seemed to resemble an arrowhead, aimed directly at their advance. With perfectly interconnecting fields of fire from the three hills, the Japanese had anticipated that any American assault would be decimated before any of the hills could be taken at all. Thus far, they had been right.
With orders to continue, the American field officers directed the attacks from command posts where the smoke ran thick. Those men did more of their work with binoculars than maps, and so the numbers and grid lines were not as important as what they could see for themselves. Quickly, labels on maps were replaced by names that more perfectly described the shapes of the obstacles the officers and their men could actually see. The names were mostly innocuous, but they gave memory to the struggles, would resonate with the fighting men far more than any simple number. Across the rear of the arrowhead, the larger, more spread-out promontories were now referred to as the Half Moon and the Horseshoe, each one labeled with perfect obviousness. But at the point, Hill Two was very different. Some described it as a half watermelon, a red-rock dome that rose little more than fifty feet high and three hundred yards long. But the name that stuck, the name the Marines would remember, was Sugar Loaf Hill.
SUGAR LOAF HILL, EAST OF NAHA, OKINAWA
MAY 14, 1945
They made progress in inches, feeling their way up into any kind of low cover, but no hole was safe, no rock or slash in the coral secure. The hill was draped and shattered with shellfire, small arms close by, artillery shells coming down on the Marines from distant caves, mortar shells impacting from knee mortars that could be anywhere at all. The low hilly formations beyond Sugar Loaf might have seemed to be an arrowhead, but to the Japanese artillery officers they created the other two points of a triangle, each one offering hidden gunners easy range toward the entire position, protecting the Japanese soldiers who the Marines now realized were right beneath them.