The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [45]
Nimitz pictured Buckner in his mind, tall, gray hair, the picture of what a general should look like. Not sure how the Japs feel about him, he thought. For all I know they never heard of him. No, the best thing we have going for us on Okinawa is the Marines. I’ll bet it doesn’t make a bit of difference to the Japs that two-thirds of our people there will be army. By now they have to think that anybody coming across a beach is a Marine. That can’t hurt. He knew that the offices in Washington had as much anxiety about the invasion as he did, thought, King’s pissed as hell that MacArthur gets the headlines. Not much I can do about that, except my job. King’s gotta be busting at the seams for us to get our people on Okinawa, grab some attention for ourselves. Hell, Iwo Jima wasn’t enough?
He knew it wasn’t. Despite any glorious photographs that reached stateside, the newspapers would not be told the casualty figures from Iwo Jima, at least for a while. The same would happen in the fight to come. That’s not the kind of press we want, he thought. MacArthur can disguise that kind of news by being … well, MacArthur. Out here, there’s not much else we can tell anyone. We fight like hell to take an island, and get chewed up doing it, and that’s pretty much the whole story. Hard for any newspaper to crow about our wonderful conquest of someplace they can’t even spell.
There was a sharp rap on the door, and he looked up, saw another of his aides, a red-haired ensign.
“Sir, sorry to interrupt you …”
“I’m done here. What is it, Greg?”
“Report just received from General Buckner, sir.”
Nimitz glanced at the empty glass of bourbon, his second, thought about filling it again.
“Yeah, I’ll bet he’s jumping around like he stepped on a beehive.” He passed on the bourbon with a hint of reluctance, pulled himself from the chair.
“I’m coming, Greg.”
The man stood aside, and Nimitz led Lamar out into the warm hallway, both men turning quickly into the radio room.
“Well, Arthur, what do you think? Is Buckner annoying the hell out of Admiral Turner? Bad idea to put two senior commanders on the same ship.” He saw a slight frown on Lamar’s face. “Yeah, I know, Lieutenant. It was my idea. All right, Ensign, what’s Buckner saying?”
“Just a general update on their preparedness, sir. The boys will be loaded onto the landing craft very soon. The offshore islands are secure, and we’ve captured a whole fleet of suicide boats.”
“Good. He’ll crow about that for a while. I promise you, later on, his after-action report will point out how the army saved the navy from certain destruction. He’s big on those kinds of details. That’s a West Pointer for you. Anything else I need to read?”
Lamar held the report in his hand, seemed to hesitate, and Nimitz knew the signal.
“Give me the damn paper.”
Lamar handed him the dispatch and Nimitz read, his eye catching the word.
“Civilians? Again?”
Lamar was looking down, did not respond, the others at the radio desk looking away. Nimitz read more of Buckner’s words, his anger growing.
“What the hell’s the matter with those people? This is Saipan all over again! Where did this happen … okay, yeah, Kerama Retto. They blew themselves up? We didn’t do a damn thing to them, and they just … blew themselves up?”
It was a memory he had tried to forget, visiting Saipan the summer before. Admiral King had been there as well, the usual high-ranking inspection of a successful campaign. What Nimitz did not expect to see was the place called Marpi Point, where hundreds of terrified civilians had fled the advance of the American Marines by hurling themselves off the cliffs onto the rocky coastline