The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [20]
One member of his staff had been indispensable and so had made the trip to the new headquarters. Nimitz heard him now, the manic fierceness of his schnauzer, a fairly vicious dog who seemed to dislike everyone but his master. Even the Marines respected the schnauzer’s temper, each man freezing in place as the schnauzer galloped past. Nimitz turned, watched with a smile as the dog bounced up to him, stopping abruptly, spinning in the sand, rolling over in a desperate request for a belly rub. Nimitz could never resist the dog’s show of soft affection, something few of his officers had ever witnessed. He leaned low, stroked the dog’s exposed stomach, the schnauzer’s tongue hanging loosely out of its mouth.
“Damn you, Mak, you’re too spoiled. Just once I’d like to try this little maneuver of yours with my own staff. They think you’re some kind of damn werewolf. Hell, I can’t even get my wife to do this to me …” He stopped, thought of the Marine sergeant, kept the indiscreet thought to himself. He stood straight again, the schnauzer bounding away once more, and Nimitz looked to the west, the sun melting into the far horizon like a fat blob of orange ice cream. The Marines kept to their usual boxlike formation, most of them keeping their gaze on the distant trees. He enjoyed talking to the men, but there was little opportunity for that beyond the walls of his compound, and there the guards understood that their job didn’t include socializing with the brass they were supposed to protect. He enjoyed their generals far less, the men like Holland Smith, known by all as Howlin’ Mad Smith, the Marine commander who had headed up the slugfests that tore Guam, Tinian, and Saipan from Japanese control. Smith’s command now included the forces that were completing operations on a dismal slab of lava rock called Iwo Jima, and Nimitz knew that the horrendous Marine casualty counts would throw Smith into a hot temper directed toward anyone in his command who had failed to live up to Smith’s own standards. It wasn’t a bad trait for a commander to have, but Smith had made few friends among the brass from the army and navy he was supposed to be working beside. Nimitz knew that Howlin’ Mad’s days were numbered in this part of the war. Even out here, a good general could create problems for himself if he didn’t respect politics. Smith would have no role at all in the upcoming invasion of Okinawa, that job placed into the hands of army general Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. Buckner had been a surprise choice to some, and Nimitz knew he was despised by Douglas MacArthur, who had made it clear that he wanted Buckner far removed from MacArthur’s own command to the south. But Buckner seemed to be a man who understood that it was possible, even necessary, to combine army and Marine forces into one cohesive unit, without making enemies in the process. And, as Nimitz had been quick to observe, Buckner was a man who understood that his superiors, namely Nimitz himself, had the last word.
He turned back toward the headquarters buildings, saw the usual rumblings of activity, jeeps coming and going, men on foot, some of them MPs. But it was the heavy equipment that caught his attention, men up on bulldozers and excavators. The Seabees were continuing to improve the Guam command post, adding buildings and storage areas as the need arose. Nimitz enjoyed watching the massive machines, green steel and black smoke. He knew the Seabees carried a chip on their shoulder for the lack of attention the newspapermen gave them. Just because a man rides a bulldozer doesn’t mean he can’t get shot to hell, he thought. They’ve sure as hell taken their share of casualties too. But if I need an airstrip or a harbor cleared, there’s no one as good at it as those boys.