The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [144]
20. ADAMS
He tried to catch his breath, stared up in perfect horror, saw Welty squatting down, close to the body of the lieutenant. Others had stopped, too many men trying to help, nothing anyone could do. Adams moved closer, up the rocky hill, stared at the lieutenant’s face, the eyes still open, empty stare, the skin already a pasty white.
“What happened?”
The question went beyond the idiotic, but no one responded, Welty upright again, a hard shout.
“Up the hill! Move it!”
More men were coming up through the defiles and muddy gaps, few stopping to see the body, who it might be. But Adams stood frozen, a long desperate moment, wanted to pull Porter up to his feet, to help the man, do something. The voice came from in front of him, the ugly sneer from Yablonski.
“He’s meat. I got the Jap. Let’s go.”
Welty was close to him now, pulling his sleeve.
“Clay! We gotta go. We’re in the open. Let’s make the ridgeline. The Japs are in every damn hole! Come on!”
Adams saw the men moving by him, heard the grunts, the scuffing of the boots. He looked at Porter once again, but there was nothing else to see, the oozing blood coming from the man’s chest, staining the rocks beneath him. Porter was gone.
“A corpsman. We need to find …”
“There ain’t any corpsmen, Clay! They’re all gone! Get your ass up the hill!”
Welty jerked him hard, and Adams began to move, following, the flow of men rising up and over the jagged coral. He had no strength in his legs, but somehow he kept up, a slow plod. Welty was still in front of him, and Adams forced the words out, “They got the sarge too. Right in front of me. A grenade.”
His harsh breathing stopped the words, and he heard a grunting response from Welty.
“Saw it.”
They climbed the sharper incline now, a ridge of coral, thick with mud and broken shards of rock that made any climb difficult. He tried to focus, to wipe the image of Porter from his mind, saw that some men were holding grenades, arms cocked, and Adams felt for his, stumbled on the coral, lost his grip on the M-1. The rifle clattered against the rock, and he grabbed it quickly, urgent fear. The ridgeline was close above him, and he realized it was where the Japanese had been, where they had dropped their grenades down on him, the grenade that killed Ferucci. The others were going up and over the sharp ridge, and he followed, pulled himself up with one hand, noticed the thick crust on his skin, his sleeve soaked with the blood of the Japanese soldier. He swung his legs over, saw a narrow ditch, hand-tooled, not just the craters from American shellfire. The trench extended in a snaking curve, following the terrain, dipping lower far to the right, where the hill opened up with shallow ravines, narrow cuts. The trench was a perfectly constructed hiding place for sharpshooters, a perfect place to toss grenades down on men who struggled to reach the position. They pulled back, he thought. Where the hell did they go? He looked up, beyond the trench, saw the rolling crest of the hill, the top, the place they were supposed to go. His mind focused on that, but there was too much activity around him, a dozen more Marines making their way into the narrow slit, as surprised as he was, every man grateful for the halt to their climb. They continued to come, some by themselves, staggering up to the trench, panting, exhausted, the shirtless glistening with sweat, others soaked in their clothes, some still in their ponchos. The faces searched the men already there, seeking a friend, or some authority, someone to tell them what to do. Up past the trench the hill was cut with crevices, shell holes, and blasted rock. But no one was moving up that far, the men close to him dropping to one knee or lying flat, all of them seeming to know that, for the moment, on this one small piece of Sugar Loaf Hill, the Japanese had abandoned