With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [144]
Snafu and I returned to our hole and got settled just in time to see Hank come stalking along from the CP. He was stopping at every foxhole along the way to find out who had been so negligent as to let the Japanese soldiers get past them and almost to the CP. Hank arrived at our foxhole and asked us why we hadn't seen the two soldiers pass if one of us was on watch as we were supposed to be.
Snafu spoke up immediately and said, “Hell, I saw 'em go right by here, but I reckoned they was headed for the company CP.” (He didn't mention his challenging the Japanese or firing at them.)
Hank looked astonished and said, “What do you mean, Snafu?”
Snafu swelled with indignation and answered, “You remember when they made me bury that Nip I shot on Peleliu when them two was headed for the CP?”
“Yeah, so what?” answered Hank in a low, menacing voice.
“Well, I told them then if they made me bury 'im, then by God, next time I seen a Nip headin’ for the CP I wasn't gonna’ stop 'im!”
I groaned in a low voice, “Oooh, shut up, Snafu.”
One didn't talk like that to a senior NCO and get away with it. Hank was a very formidable person and merited the tremendous respect we felt for him, but woe be unto the Marine who didn't do a task properly and incurred his wrath. Hank treated us with respect and compassion—if we followed orders and did our best. I had no desire to see what he would do to someone who didn't, but I thought I was about to. So I turned my head and half closed my eyes, as did all the awestruck men in the foxholes within earshot who had been watching Snafu and Hank.
Nothing happened. I glanced at Snafu and Hank as they stood there glaring at each other, a bantam rooster glaring up at a mighty eagle.
Finally Hank said, “You'd better not let that happen again!” He turned and stalked back to the CP.
Snafu mumbled and grumbled. The rest of us sighed with relief. I fully expected Hank at least to order Snafu to bury the two Japanese down there on the railroad, and then Snafu, as my corporal, would order me onto the burial detail as had happened on Peleliu. But he didn't, and someone else spaded mud over the two corpses.
Much later, when Hank was leaving Company K for home after an outstanding record in three campaigns, I asked him what he had thought about that incident. He just looked at me and grinned, but wouldn't say anything about it. His grin revealed, however, that he respected Snafu and knew he wasn't lax in any way, and probably that he himself had been ordered by some officer to look into the affair.
Because of the surroundings, our casualties during the stalemate on Half Moon were some of the most pathetic I ever had seen. Certainly a beautiful landscape didn't make a wound less painful or a death less tragic. But our situation before Shuri was the most awful place conceivable for a man to be hurt or to die.
Most of the wounds resulted from enemy shell fragments, but it seemed to me we had more than the usual number of cases of blast concussion from exploding shells. That was understandable because of the frequent heavy shellings we were subjected to. All the casualties were muddy and soaking wet like the rest of us. That seemed to accentuate the bloody battle dressings on their wounds and their dull expressions of shock and pain, which made the horror and hopelessness of it all more vivid as we struggled through the chilly driving rain and deep mud to evacuate them.
Some of the concussion cases could walk and were helped and led (some seemed to have no sure sense of direction) to the rear like men walking in their sleep. Some wore wild-eyed expressions of shock and fear. Others whom I knew well, though could barely recognize, wore expressions of idiots or simpletons knocked too witless to be afraid anymore. The blast of a shell had literally jolted them into a different state of awareness from the rest of us. Some of those who didn't return probably never recovered but