The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [85]
The battle had been brief and mostly one-sided. The Marines had found targets, but not many, and the work had been done mostly by the tankers and the flamethrowers, few Japanese soldiers willing to come up to the surface to fight on terms the fresher recruits had expected. For many there was little to do but wait and pick out targets as they emerged from the caves. Some came out as prisoners, but not many. The Japanese who emerged with their weapons did not live long enough to aim them, some holding grenades they never had a chance to throw. But those had been few as well. There was no way to know how many of the enemy were in the ground around them, and how many might still be alive. But Adams had watched with horrified fascination as the liquid flames shot deep into the small cavelike tunnels, and the one-man spider holes were either empty or held the body of a Japanese soldier too stubborn to run away.
With the fight drawing to a close, the artillery batteries had been brought closer, the distant hills now splattered in a cascade of fire, aided by the good work of the dive-bombers from the carriers offshore. The Marines were pulled back, Captain Bennett’s company regrouping on the flat ground above the beach, ground that was too familiar. To everyone’s relief, the bodies of the four Marines had been removed, and one of the foxholes had been filled in, marked by a trail of stained brown dirt that Adams had to guess was all that remained of the girl. Before the darkness came again, there were more officers, jeeps and amphtracs, command posts set up, aid stations for those few who had been wounded in the attack on the Japanese positions. As the men settled back into their makeshift encampment, there had been a shocking surprise, which not even the officers expected. Along the beaches, small patrol boats moved in close, some of the Marines not even noticing them until the voices came, broadcast on loudspeakers. The men who worked at their foxholes were brought to a halt, no sergeants griping, no orders from the lieutenants. The loudspeakers carried a message, a solemn announcement that no one could ignore. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died.
Like most of those around him, Adams knew little of the man beyond what he had heard on the radio, or what the newsreels showed, a president who was more like a kindly grandfather than their commander in chief. After Pearl Harbor, it had been Roosevelt’s words that inspired Adams to join the Marines, inspiration shared by hundreds of thousands of young men across the country, including many of those who shared the foxholes above the beach. The announcement threw a strange cloud over the men, some of them reacting by not reacting at all, others invigorated to work harder, to dig the foxhole deeper, better. Some just sat and cried, as though they had truly lost a member of their family. No one interrupted that, there was no teasing, no embarrassment to anyone who had grown up knowing no other name who meant so much to the nation. After a time the emotions passed, replaced by a silent gloom, and there were few conversations, almost no one thinking about the new man in charge, most not even knowing that his name was Truman. With the fading daylight the Marines climbed down into their holes, awaiting the darkness again, staring at shadows, keeping watch against the infiltrators, fighting the panic and the nightmares that rolled through them all night long.
And the next night, they would do it all again.
13. NIMITZ
For the next several days, the fights rolled northward, the Japanese making their stands in a way that only invited defeat. Rather than attack the Americans with guile and sound tactics, the Japanese mostly held their ground, and were overwhelmed by the crushing superiority of the Marine tanks, artillery, and naval aircraft. Each night the infiltrators would come, small-scale strikes against the dug-in Marines, rattling the nerves and trigger fingers of the men who were suffering mostly from heat and the lack of sleep. But the Japanese seemed content to wage a piecemeal