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By Root 1518 0

to think of Welty and Ferucci and everyone else, wondering if their possessions were in that fire, wondering if someone had had the decency to sort through, to send home anything that the family might treasure. He did not stay there long enough to find out, knew only that his own bag contained no treasures at all. The only souvenirs he carried would not catch anyone’s attention. He still had the single can of Welty’s stew, and with that, the shattered eyeglasses that his friend had worn. He had no explanation for it, but Adams had seen the blackest pieces of his own heart, knew with perfect certainty that if anyone tried to take those from him, he would have killed them with his hands.

Soon after reaching Guam, the veterans had been given the astounding luxury of a thirty-day leave. Adams had absorbed that news with decidedly mixed feelings, but it had been Sergeant Mortensen who had kicked him hard in the ass, a dressing down about feeling sorry for himself. There was family, after all, all of them had somebody, and Mortensen wouldn’t hear excuses from anyone lucky enough to get a leave. The Marines were offered a ship to San Diego and a train ticket to anywhere beyond, with enough time to make the visit worthwhile. Mortensen was not about to let any one of his veterans pass that by, especially since, in a platoon of fifty men, Adams was one of only six who had been with the unit since the invasion of Okinawa. The faces of the veterans were familiar, but no one was close, pure chance that any cluster of friends had long been shattered by the brutality of the fights. New friendships seemed nonexistent, the other veterans seeming to stay away from anyone else, just as he did. The replacements were learning quickly to keep their mouths shut, too many broken teeth pounded into the mouths of idiot recruits who did what they always did, asking for advice, or even more stupid, digging the veterans for some tale about the great adventure of combat. Adams had been lucky, so far. None of the new men on Guam had approached him, not even the tough guys, who heard talk of his reputation with the boxing gloves. There was something dangerous in the veterans now, deep beneath the calm and the distant stare. Even the captain had let him be, no suggestion that Adams should participate in the never-ending rituals of the boxing matches. For Adams those days were past, no desire in him at all to break another jawbone. That need had been fulfilled for the last time by a Japanese soldier on Sugar Loaf Hill.

If Mortensen’s loud insistence on accepting the leave wasn’t enough, the veterans had been inspired as well by word of their next mission. The entire Sixth Division was scheduled for a new assignment, occupying the seaports on the Chinese coast, and Mortensen had been as definite about that as Captain Bennett, that the assignment was open-ended, that the Marines might be stationed in some godforsaken hole in some bizarrely strange place for more months than anyone wanted to think about. The talk had rolled through Guam about that as well, the crude disappointment from the new men that they wouldn’t join the party when it came time for the invasion of Japan. The invasion force would mostly be army, not Marines, and the transport ships were already in motion, some bringing men who had already done service in Europe. When the China deployment was announced, there had been plenty of outrage, the newer Marines making a good show of their envy for the soldiers who were going to clean up Jap-land.

And then, word came of Hiroshima.

Adams still knew nothing of their new president, but it had been Mortensen who had announced with vigorous passion that if the opportunity ever came his way, the sergeant would drop to his knees and kiss Harry Truman on the ass. The others had laughed, all but the veterans. Adams knew what those men knew, that this president wanted the war to end so badly that he was willing to use this astounding new weapon against the enemy. Adams wasn’t as outspoken about it as Mortensen, but he imagined the same scene, Truman and