The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [82]
Welty said nothing, and Adams felt the familiar shivering, spreading out from inside his gut, his hands gripping the M-1. He rose up again with Welty, stared hard into the darkness, his night vision coming back, could smell the explosives, the dust. Welty tugged on his arm again, startling him.
“I can hear your teeth chattering. Sit. Keep the K-bar out. There could be more of them. They jump in here, cut ’em hard and fast!”
Adams obeyed, felt a strange calm from Welty, the mild-mannered man now taking charge. He shifted himself against the bottom of the foxhole, heard voices, the sergeant, the lieutenant, communicating in single words.
“Hurt?”
“None.”
“Morning.”
Adams translated, thought, we’ll see what the hell happened in the morning. God, Gridley’s hurt. We need his BAR. Somebody else will have to carry it. Maybe he’s not too bad.
He gripped the K-bar knife hard in his left hand, kept it pointing upward, his right hand resting on the trigger guard of the M-1. The questions rolled through his brain. How many more? They gonna do this all night? Maybe we should shoot every now and then. What happens if they get the lieutenant? He stared ahead into black dark, glanced down toward Welty, could barely make out the shape of the man curled up beside him. He stared out again into the darkness, his brain working, feverish, every man in the platoon asking the same questions.
APRIL 13, 1945
DAWN
There had been no sleep for Adams, the night creeping past in an agonizing torrent of images, waking nightmares that skipped through his mind, scenes of blood and death, questions of what they would see in the light. The darkness had been alive with motion, his imagination playing terrifying games, dancing figures in the dark, small brush suddenly running away, then there again, unmoving. With the first hint of gray, he had cursed anxiously at the darkness to go away, felt desperate relief as the ground revealed itself. His vision increased by the minute and by the foot, finally to where Yablonski and Gridley lay, then farther, a dull shadow taking shape, more, until the images were no longer just in his mind. Beside Yablonski’s foxhole lay the dead soldier, blood all through his uniform, Yablonski’s manic work with the knife more efficient than it needed to be. In front of Adams lay another Japanese body, no more than twenty yards away. With more daylight the man’s dark form took shape, and Adams could see that the man had no head, everything above his shoulders a bloody mass of shredded cloth and skin. On both sides helmets were rising up, the rest of the platoon taking it in, the daylight erasing the nightmares. To the left, out in front of the next squad, he saw a third body, bareheaded, lying faceup, his arms twisted in some bizarre contortion, as though the man had tried to tie himself in a knot.
“Nobody move. Stay down in your damn holes! Remember those machine guns!”
The men to that side obeyed their sergeant’s command, even the most curious settling back into the ground. The talk began now.
“We got ’em!”
“Hell, I got him! He was right in front of me!”
“One got himself!”
Adams settled back into the hole, sat, saw Welty doing the same, the redhead now digging into his backpack.
“Chocolate bar? I got plenty.”
“No thanks. God, did you see the one right out front? What do you think happened?”
Welty looked at him, and Adams could see the man’s face, just enough light to show the reflection of his glasses. Welty said, “Seen it before. Jap goes to throw his grenade and the fuse goes off too soon. Blew his damn head off. Their grenades must be crap.”
“Wonder where he was throwing it?”
“Don’t. Doesn’t matter.”
“I saw three dead ones. Think there were more?”
“Yep.”
Welty ripped open the cardboard of the K ration box, scattered the contents beside him. He poked, appraising, said, “God, I could use some coffee.”
Adams felt grit in his mouth, his tongue like cotton.
“I need water. My canteens are empty.